EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorCloud Storage (Personal)Headquarters: US

Hightail: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Hightail is a cloud service for file sharing and creative collaboration. It was founded as YouSendIt Inc. in 2004 and renamed Hightail in 2013. It is offered as a hosted web service, and the vendor's website presents it as part of the OpenText family, with a focus on file sharing and creative collaboration.

OpenText acquired Hightail in February 2018, and OpenText is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Before the acquisition the company was based in California, and its employees moved to OpenText's San Mateo office in 2018. The vendor's website does not state where customer data is hosted, and the service is not open source. For a European organisation the main points to check are the US operating base, the Canadian parent and the hosting location, which should be confirmed directly with the provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Hightail pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-30
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
    Key management with a non-European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

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
Ultimate parent companyCAVerified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUSVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantNoVendor-stated
CategoryCloud Storage (Personal)
TypeProduct
Websitehightail.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Hightail

The European alternatives to Hightail 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

22 European Cloud Storage (Personal) vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Hightail one of many dependencies?

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

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Hightail

Hightail 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. The ultimate owner is based in CA. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

Hightail hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Hightail is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

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

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Hightail include CloudMe, Cozy Cloud and Cryptee. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Hightail?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Hightail include Cozy Cloud, Cryptee, Filen and Internxt. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Hightail is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. 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 Cloud Storage (Personal)

Cloud Storage (Personal): Personal cloud storage — sync and share files. 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 →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Cloud Storage (Personal) page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Hightail — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score