Non-EU vendorWhiteboarding & Visual CollaborationHeadquarters: AU

Milanote: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Milanote is a visual tool for organising creative projects. Users combine notes, images, videos and sketches on boards, for example for moodboards and project planning. It targets creative professionals, including in design, film, writing and marketing. It is available as a web app, desktop app and mobile app, with a web clipper for saving web content.

Milanote Pty Ltd is an Australian company with its contact address in Melbourne, so Australian law forms its primary legal framework. Its privacy policy says it follows GDPR standards, but also states that data goes to the United States, where its servers are located. According to the company's security page, data is stored on AWS and Google Cloud, and AWS facilities are primarily located in the United States. No EU-specific data residency commitment was found. For a European organisation, data transfers, sub-processors and the data processing terms should be assessed before adoption.

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Sovereignty score

32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (AU)
Data residency SOV-30
No hosting in Europe (US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
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-630
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 10, 2026

Headquarters	AU (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration
Type	Product
Website	milanote.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Milanote

The European alternatives to Milanote 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

11 European Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration 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 Milanote

Milanote is headquartered in AU, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

Milanote 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.

Milanote 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 Milanote 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 Milanote?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Milanote include Collaboard, Conceptboard and Explain Everything. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Milanote?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Milanote include Nextcloud Whiteboard. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Milanote is headquartered in AU (OTHER) and hosts data in US. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. 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 10, 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 Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration

Whiteboarding & Visual Collaboration: Infinite-canvas whiteboards for brainstorming, workshops and visual planning. 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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