EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceWhiteboarding & Visual CollaborationHeadquarters: US

Concepts: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Concepts is a sketching and drawing app with an infinite canvas, editable vectors, layers and brush libraries. It is aimed at people who sketch and draw ideas, and it supports importing and exporting files such as PDF, PNG, PSD, SVG and DXF. The product page lists apps for iOS, Windows, Android and ChromeOS. The app is installed on the user's own device. The page does not describe whether drawings are stored locally or synchronised to a cloud service.

Concepts is published by TopHatch, Inc., whose address in the privacy policy is in Redwood City, California, United States. The policy states that user information may be transferred to the United States and applies the GDPR to users in the EEA and the United Kingdom, with standard contractual clauses for transfers. No hosting location is named. For a European organisation, the key question is whether files stay on the device or are synchronised to services hosted in the US, and this should be checked in the product documentation before use.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Concepts pre-selected
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Sovereignty score
55 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
    Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 11, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hostingSelf-hosted, e.g. in US (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
CategoryWhiteboarding & Visual Collaboration
TypeProduct
Websiteconcepts.app ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Concepts

The European alternatives to Concepts come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

11 European Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Concepts

Concepts is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Concepts runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

Concepts is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Concepts together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Concepts?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Concepts include Collaboard, Conceptboard and Explain Everything. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Concepts?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Concepts include Nextcloud Whiteboard. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Concepts GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Concepts is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 11, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration

Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration: Infinite-canvas whiteboards for brainstorming, workshops and visual planning. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to Concepts — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score