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

groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA): sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

The groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) is a groupware platform from step3IT GmbH of Neumünster, aimed at public authorities, municipalities and organisations that want to run their communication infrastructure entirely on-premises. It combines email with smart folders and tags, personal and shared calendars, contacts, tasks and notes. According to the vendor, Microsoft Outlook connects natively over MAPI over HTTP without add-ons; a web client, ActiveSync for smartphones and tablets, and IMAP, POP3 and SMTP for standard clients are also supported. The appliance handles multiple tenants and, according to the vendor, is designed for hosting and data-centre environments.

step3IT GmbH is headquartered in Germany; the website names no parent company in another country. The EGA runs in your own infrastructure, so your data stays where you place it and no US cloud provider sits between you and your mail data. It is a commercial product, not open source. If you take it as a service from a hosting partner, it is worth asking where that partner stores the data.

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Sovereignty score
80 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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-680
    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 15, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Business Email & Groupware
Type
Product
Website
step3it.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA)

The European alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) come from our knowledge base of over 9,400 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

41 European Business Email & Groupware 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 groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA)

groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) 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.

groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) 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 groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) 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 groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA)?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) include AgentJ, audriga and Axigen. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA)?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) include AgentJ, Benno MailArchiv and CipherMail. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

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 15, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

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.

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8 European alternatives to groupios Extended Groupware Appliance (EGA) — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score