EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceBusiness Email & GroupwareHeadquarters: CH

Roundcube: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Roundcube is a webmail client: a browser-based, multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. It offers drag-and-drop message management, full MIME and HTML support, multiple sender identities, an address book with groups and LDAP connectors, threaded message lists, spell checking, shared IMAP folders with access control and PGP support. A plugin API and skins allow customisation. Roundcube is only the client and needs an IMAP server. It is written in PHP and JavaScript, uses MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite, and is installed by the organisation itself, also as a Docker image.

Roundcube is released under the GPL version 3, with exceptions for skins and plugins. According to the project website, Nextcloud has been the new home of Roundcube since 2023, and the GitHub repository states that its developers and contributors are volunteers. Because you run the webmail client yourself, messages stay on the IMAP server of your choice, for example in the EU. Operations and updates remain your own responsibility.

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Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • 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-6100
    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 July 2, 2026
HeadquartersCH (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent companyDEVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelOpen-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryBusiness Email & Groupware
TypeProduct
Websiteroundcube.net ↗

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 Roundcube

The European alternatives to Roundcube 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

28 European Business Email & Groupware 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 Roundcube

Roundcube is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act. The ultimate owner is based in DE, also within Europe.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Roundcube scores best on data residency.

Roundcube 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 Roundcube 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 Roundcube?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Roundcube include Axigen, Benno MailArchiv and BlueMind. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Roundcube?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Roundcube include Benno MailArchiv, CipherMail, Dovecot and EGroupware. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Roundcube is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Roundcube 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 Business Email & Groupware

Business Email & Groupware: Business email servers, groupware, calendar and contact 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 Roundcube — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score