Self-hosted / open sourceStorage & BackupHeadquarters: DE

SEP sesam: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SEP sesam is backup and recovery software for virtual and physical environments, developed by SEP. It covers disaster recovery, instant recovery and immutable backups, with a web interface through which daily administration can be done entirely. The vendor lists support for multi-hypervisor environments and Proxmox, and for applications such as SAP, Oracle and Red Hat. With SEP CAPS, cloud data from Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Google Workspace can also be backed up. SEP also offers a backup-as-a-service option and a trial version.

SEP positions the software as "Made in Germany" and is headquartered in Holzkirchen near Munich. In 2024 the investment firm BIP Capital Partners, which focuses on German-speaking and Benelux companies, acquired a majority stake. SEP sesam is proprietary, not open source. You install the software yourself, for example on your own servers in a European data centre, so you decide where the backups are stored. SEP also has a support and sales team in the United States for American customers.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with SEP sesam pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

80 / 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-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-680
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

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
Ultimate parent company	LUVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	HETZNER-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE (DE)Technically measured
Category	Storage & Backup
Type	Product
Website	sep.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 SEP sesam

The European alternatives to SEP sesam 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

32 European Storage & Backup 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 SEP sesam

SEP sesam 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. The ultimate owner is based in LU, also within Europe.

SEP sesam runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

SEP sesam is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs SEP sesam 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 SEP sesam?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to SEP sesam include Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to SEP sesam?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to SEP sesam include Bacula Systems, Bareos and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is SEP sesam GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

SEP sesam is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes SEP sesam 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".

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 Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. 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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