EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignHRHeadquarters: CH

SMART FED: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

SMART FED is an employee feedback and survey platform for organisations. Employees choose when and on what to give feedback, through a web app that also works on smartphones: they select an addressee, a topic and a criterion, and say what they appreciate or what could be improved. An admin module and a management cockpit, which only work on desktop, notebook or tablet, bring the feedback together in time, topic and organisational perspectives. The vendor mentions over 900 feedback criteria to choose from. Anonymity has a threshold: the origin of feedback is only shown once at least three employees in a unit have given the same feedback.

SMART FED is provided by smart-fed AG in Rietheim, Switzerland. Switzerland is not an EU member state, but it is an EFTA country with an adequacy decision from the European Commission. According to the vendor, all data is hosted on servers in Switzerland or, if desired, in Germany, under the GDPR rules. Access to the personal account is protected by two-factor authentication. The site names no owner and no self-hosting option.

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Sovereignty score
69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
  • Data residency SOV-390
    Hosting in the EU and Switzerland
  • 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 October 14, 2026
Headquarters
CH (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model
Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
CH, EUVerified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
HR
Type
Product
Website
smart-fed.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to SMART FED

The European alternatives to SMART FED come from our knowledge base of over 9,200 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

107 European HR 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 SMART FED

SMART FED 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.

SMART FED hosts data in the EU and in Switzerland. Switzerland is covered by a European Commission adequacy decision, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. If you require strictly EU hosting, check the data processing agreement for which data is stored in Switzerland.

SMART FED 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 SMART FED 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 SMART FED?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to SMART FED include absence.io, AFAS and AlexisHR. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to SMART FED?

Our list of EU alternatives to SMART FED is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is SMART FED GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

SMART FED is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH, EU. That makes SMART FED 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 14, 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

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in HR

HR: Human resources — personnel management, payroll, recruiting. 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.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to SMART FED — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score