EU sovereignCloud IaaSHeadquarters: DE

IONOS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

IONOS is a German provider of hosting and cloud infrastructure. Its cloud offering includes Cloud Cubes (virtual servers billed by the minute), dedicated and bare-metal servers, block, object (S3-compatible) and file storage, managed Kubernetes, database as a service (including PostgreSQL and MongoDB), networking services such as load balancing, DNS, CDN and DDoS protection, and an AI Model Hub. You use the services yourself through a web console and API. IONOS also provides web hosting, domains and email.

IONOS SE is headquartered in Montabaur, Germany, and is part of the German United Internet group. According to IONOS, its cloud data centres are in Germany, France and Spain, but also in the United Kingdom and the United States. If you want to keep data within the EU, select an EU location deliberately. The cloud platform is not offered as open source. IONOS emphasises European digital sovereignty and states that its new Frankfurt data centre gives customers full control over their data, with no access from abroad.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with IONOS pre-selected

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
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 9, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	IONOS-AS - IONOS SE, DE (US)Technically measured
Category	Cloud IaaS
Type	Product
Website	ionos.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to IONOS

The European alternatives to IONOS 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

84 European Cloud IaaS vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is IONOS 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 IONOS

IONOS 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.

IONOS hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

IONOS 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 IONOS 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 IONOS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to IONOS include 1984 Hosting, acens and Aiven. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to IONOS?

Our list of EU alternatives to IONOS is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

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

IONOS is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. That makes IONOS 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 9, 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".

Security page / trust center: ionos.com/security

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Cloud IaaS

Cloud IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service — virtual machines, storage, networking. 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 dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Cloud IaaS page — with no effect on your score