EU sovereignCollaborationHeadquarters: DE

Open-Xchange: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Open-Xchange (OX) supplies business communication software, with OX App Suite as its core product: email, calendar and collaboration tools positioned as an alternative to Gmail and Outlook, with an integrated AI assistant. The audience is mainly telecom operators, hosting companies, internet service providers and public-sector bodies, which offer the solution under their own brand. OX App Suite is delivered as software for service providers and public institutions, and as OX Cloud, the as-a-service version. The OX Group also includes Dovecot Pro (a commercial email server) and PowerDNS (DNS software).

OX was founded in 2005 with offices in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. Its website describes the mission as building solutions based on open-source software, and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein moved its email and calendar to the platform. According to the vendor, customers keep control over data, deployment, branding and cost. For OX Cloud, additional data centres were opened in the EU and the US in 2019. A European organisation should therefore settle in advance in which region its data will be processed.

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

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Sovereignty score

82 / 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-390
Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
Open source: low switching costs
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-690
Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

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	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	2 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARESPECTRUM - Cloudflare London, LLC, US (US)Technically measured
Category	Collaboration
Type	Product
Website	open-xchange.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 Open-Xchange

The European alternatives to Open-Xchange 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

37 European 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 Open-Xchange

Open-Xchange 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.

Open-Xchange 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.

Open-Xchange is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

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

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Open-Xchange include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad and Nextcloud Deck. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Open-Xchange?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Open-Xchange include BigBlueButton (self-host), CryptPad, Nextcloud Deck, FluffyChat and HedgeDoc. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Open-Xchange GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Open-Xchange is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Open-Xchange 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".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): legal.hubspot.com/security?__hstc=40239101.fab76aab49c447c90dea33c27a792cdd.1646817944199.1646825556423.1647349957721.3&__hssc=40239101.1.1647349957721&__hsfp=3044879280
Security page / trust center: ox.io/ethics-compliance?hsLang=io

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Digital sovereignty in Collaboration

Collaboration: Team communication, file sharing, video conferencing, document editing. 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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