Self-hosted / open sourceNetwork & Firewall ManagementHeadquarters: ES

Zentyal: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Zentyal is an open-source server distribution based on Ubuntu Linux, aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. It combines Active Directory-compatible directory services with mail, groupware, gateway, firewall, DNS and DHCP services, and is positioned as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows Small Business Server. The server edition is installed on the organisation's own hardware, in a virtual machine or on a cloud instance the customer runs; the vendor site describes no Zentyal-hosted cloud service. Version 8.1 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was announced in March 2026.

Zentyal S.L., the company behind the product, is based in Zaragoza, Spain. The source code is available under the GNU General Public License, and paid subscription licences are also sold, so an organisation can inspect and run the software itself. The site links a Data Protection Addendum but does not state where data is processed. For a European organisation, a Spanish developer, locally installed software and an open-source base mean that directory and administration data stays on its own systems.

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Sovereignty score

94 / 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-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 October 12, 2026

Headquarters	ES (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Network & Firewall Management
Type	Product
Website	zentyal.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Zentyal

The European alternatives to Zentyal come from our knowledge base of over 7,800 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

55 European Network & Firewall Management 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 Zentyal

Zentyal is headquartered in ES 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 Zentyal scores best on data residency.

Zentyal 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 Zentyal 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 Zentyal?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Zentyal include Accelleran, ADTRAN Networks (ADVA) and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Zentyal?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Zentyal include BIRD Internet Routing Daemon. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

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

Zentyal is headquartered in ES (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Zentyal 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

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".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

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

Checked on October 12, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Network & Firewall Management

Network & Firewall Management: Central management of firewalls, switches and Wi-Fi, network access control (NAC), load balancing and DNS/DHCP/IPAM. 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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