EU sovereignWeb HostingHeadquarters: DE

1&1 IONOS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

IONOS, formerly 1&1 IONOS, offers shared web hosting, WordPress hosting, domain names, email and an AI-assisted website builder, complemented by VPS, dedicated servers and cloud products. The services are aimed at individuals, small and medium-sized businesses and agencies. Web hosting is delivered as a hosted service with, among other things, one-click WordPress installation, SSH and SFTP access, SSL and backups; root access is available only with VPS, dedicated and cloud servers.

IONOS SE is headquartered in Montabaur, Germany, and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The majority of its shares is held by United Internet, also a German group. According to IONOS, its web hosting runs on web servers and web space in Germany and visitor data is not transferred to countries outside the EU (the provider's own claim). For other products, IONOS also operates data centres outside the EU, for example in the United Kingdom and the United States, so the location should be checked per product. The software is not open source and the service cannot be self-hosted. The ownership chain has no non-European parent.

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Sovereignty score

71 / 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-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-655
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 July 2, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	IONOS-AS - IONOS SE, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	Web Hosting
Type	Product
Website	ionos.de ↗

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 1&1 IONOS

The European alternatives to 1&1 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

74 European Web Hosting 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 1&1 IONOS

1&1 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.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so 1&1 IONOS scores best on data residency.

1&1 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 1&1 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 1&1 IONOS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to 1&1 IONOS include Alfahosting, ALL-INKL.COM and Antagonist. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to 1&1 IONOS?

Our list of EU alternatives to 1&1 IONOS is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is 1&1 IONOS GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

1&1 IONOS is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes 1&1 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 July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

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 Web Hosting

Web Hosting: Web hosting providers — shared hosting, managed hosting, domain registration. 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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