Self-hosted / open sourceBusiness Email & GroupwareHeadquarters: DE

Z1 SecureMail Gateway: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

The Z1 SecureMail Gateway from Zertificon Solutions GmbH in Berlin encrypts and signs business email with S/MIME certificates. The product includes automated certificate management and a method for encrypting email between companies, called GlobalCrypt. The vendor positions it as an addition to cloud mailboxes at Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and also markets it for NIS2 and DORA requirements. The gateway can run on-premises or in a European data centre.

Zertificon Solutions GmbH was founded in Berlin in 2004 and presents its products as engineered in Germany and free of backdoors. The imprint and privacy notice name only the German company, and no parent company is named. Self-hosted operation keeps message processing at a location the customer chooses, which may be an EU data centre. The product is not open source. The vendor describes the software as suitable for meeting GDPR requirements.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Z1 SecureMail Gateway pre-selected

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

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 12, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Business Email & Groupware
Type	Product
Website	zertificon.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Z1 SecureMail Gateway

The European alternatives to Z1 SecureMail Gateway come from our knowledge base of over 8,000 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

36 European Business Email & Groupware vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Z1 SecureMail Gateway one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Z1 SecureMail Gateway

Z1 SecureMail Gateway 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.

Z1 SecureMail Gateway 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.

Z1 SecureMail Gateway 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 Z1 SecureMail Gateway 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 Z1 SecureMail Gateway?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Z1 SecureMail Gateway include audriga, Axigen and Benno MailArchiv. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Z1 SecureMail Gateway?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Z1 SecureMail Gateway include Benno MailArchiv, CipherMail and Dovecot. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Z1 SecureMail Gateway GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Z1 SecureMail Gateway is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Z1 SecureMail Gateway 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 12, 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 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.

Also in this category

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Business Email & Groupware page — with no effect on your score