EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceBusiness Email & GroupwareHeadquarters: US

Cyrus IMAP: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Cyrus IMAP is an open-source email, contacts and calendar server. Users reach their data through JMAP, IMAP, POP3, CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV. The software also provides Sieve filtering, replication, SPF, DKIM and DMARC handling, and authentication through Cyrus SASL. It is designed for large installations and for sealed servers on which ordinary users cannot log in. Cyrus IMAP is installed and operated by the organisation itself.

The project began at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. There is no controlling company: according to the bylaws, a Governance Board and a group of core developers set the direction. The source code is on GitHub. Because you run the server yourself, your organisation decides where the data is stored, for example in the EU. Support comes from the community and mailing lists; there is no commercial vendor as a contracting party. This means full control over the data, together with responsibility for operating the system.

Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
    Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
    Open source: low switching costs
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-675
    Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

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 4, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model
Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting
EUVerified by hand
Open-source
YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Type
Product
Website

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Cyrus IMAP

The European alternatives to Cyrus IMAP come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 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

28 European Business Email & Groupware vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Cyrus IMAP one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Why digital sovereignty matters with Cyrus IMAP

Cyrus IMAP 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Cyrus IMAP scores best on data residency.

Cyrus IMAP is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Cyrus IMAP 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 Cyrus IMAP?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Cyrus IMAP include Axigen, Benno MailArchiv and BlueMind. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Cyrus IMAP?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Cyrus IMAP include Benno MailArchiv, CipherMail, Dovecot and EGroupware. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Cyrus IMAP GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Cyrus IMAP is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU. 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 4, 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 Business Email & Groupware

Business Email & Groupware: Business email servers, groupware, calendar and contact management. 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.

Also in this category

See all →
8 European alternatives to Cyrus IMAP — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score