EU sovereignStorage & BackupHeadquarters: DE

IONOS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

IONOS is a hosting and cloud provider offering domains, email, websites, servers and cloud services. In storage, IONOS provides Cloud Object Storage, which follows S3 API standards and therefore works with S3-compatible applications and infrastructure, and a Backup Service for cloud backups. Data is stored as objects in buckets, with access keys, access control lists and bucket policies to manage permissions. The services are consumed as a hosted cloud service.

IONOS is a German company headquartered in Montabaur and a member of the United Internet group. According to its documentation, Object Storage is available in Frankfurt and Berlin (Germany) and Logroño (Spain); the documentation also lists a region in Lenexa, United States, for contract-owned buckets. The product is not open source. For a European organisation this means the bucket region chosen at creation is decisive: those who need EU data residency select a German or Spanish region.

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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)
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, USVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	IONOS-AS - IONOS SE, DE (US)Technically measured
Category	Storage & Backup
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

32 European Storage & Backup 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 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. 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 Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to IONOS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to IONOS include Bacula Systems, Bareos and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

IONOS is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US. 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".

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 Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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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