EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCybersecurityHeadquarters: DE

Retarus: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Retarus provides cloud-based business communication and email security services. Its email security offering includes a secure email gateway and an API for Microsoft 365, with threat protection, sandboxing, post-delivery protection and email continuity, plus add-ons for encryption and archiving. Retarus also offers cloud fax, transactional email and enterprise SMS, and integration services such as EDI, e-invoicing and document processing. The services are delivered from the cloud and connected through gateways and APIs.

Retarus is headquartered in Munich, Germany, is privately held and also has a US headquarters and offices in other countries. The company says it designs its services around European data privacy requirements and GDPR compliance. It describes its data centres as located around the world and built to meet the data protection rules of each location, without naming the sites on the page consulted. European organisations that want their data to stay within the EU should therefore confirm with Retarus which data centres process their traffic.

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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
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalHETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
CategoryCybersecurity
TypeProduct
Websiteretarus.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 Retarus

The European alternatives to Retarus come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 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

93 European Cybersecurity 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 Retarus

Retarus 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 Retarus scores best on data residency.

Retarus 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 Retarus 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 Retarus?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Retarus include Actalis, Advenica and Avira. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Retarus?

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

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

Retarus is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Retarus 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

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

security.txt
retarus.com/.well-known/security.txt

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity: Threat detection, endpoint protection, SIEM, vulnerability management. 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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8 European alternatives to Retarus — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score