I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

European cloud & infrastructure providers

  • Strong enthusiasm for Hetzner (price/performance, responsive support) and Scaleway (simplicity, reliability), with several people migrating from US hosts (DigitalOcean, Linode) and OVH.
  • OVH gets multiple horror stories (broken control panel, forced 2FA with postal mail recovery, Strasbourg datacenter fire, fraud filters) though some still use it in HA setups or for specific services.
  • Critiques of EU clouds: weaker IAM and workload identity than hyperscalers, less mature encryption/isolation tooling, occasional internal networking issues at Hetzner (microservices need to assume failures).
  • Bunny is popular for CDN/DNS (cheap, fast support) but lacks IPv4→IPv6 origin routing; CDN77/Datapacket mentioned as EU options, though “talk to sales” pricing deters smaller users.

Domains, email, and supporting services

  • Domain registrars: INWX, Openprovider, ClouDNS, Netim, Domain Chief discussed. EU registrars often pricier than US ones like Porkbun, and UX can be clunky (manual balances, poor deletion flows).
  • Email: transactional/marketing email is a pain point. EU-ish options mentioned include Mailjet/Mailgun EU, Brevo, Lettermint, Mailersend, Mailpace; large-scale, cheap marketing email still seen as an AWS‑SES‑dominated space.
  • Some worry that US‑registered firms (CLOUD Act) negate EU data‑sovereignty benefits even if infra is physically in Europe.

Git hosting and CI

  • Many self‑host Gitea or Forgejo; Forgejo exists because of controversy over Gitea’s move to a for‑profit, “open‑core” direction.
  • Codeberg praised but only suitable for open source.
  • Concern that GitHub may use public repos for LLM training; debate over whether private repos are at risk.

Motivations: sovereignty, politics, and realism

  • Motivations include privacy, avoiding US intelligence reach, not funding US policy, and reducing dependence on potentially sanctionable platforms.
  • Skeptics argue complete avoidance of US services is effectively impossible (TLDs/ICANN, Apple/Google app ecosystems, AI, ad platforms) without massive investment or regulatory bans.
  • Some see this as a political “innovation token” that adds cost/complexity when early products need to optimize for speed and customer value.

Authentication & user behavior

  • Strong agreement that “Sign in with Google/Apple” boosts conversions; removing social logins is viewed as a measurable conversion hit.
  • Long debate: security‑minded users prefer email+password+password managers or passkeys; most “normal” users prioritize low friction and brand familiarity.
  • National ID systems (e.g., BankID) and the EU Digital Identity Wallet mentioned as potential EU-centric auth layers, but fragmentation and lock‑in are concerns.

Self‑hosting vs cloud and definition of sovereignty

  • Some advocate in‑house bare metal (e.g., Mac Studios + Postgres + MinIO) as cheaper and more sovereign than any cloud.
  • Others highlight operational risk, DDoS/WAF needs, networking, backups, and rare-but-deadly failure events as reasons to favor managed DBs and established providers.
  • Debate over “sovereignty”: merely choosing European vendors vs actually owning and operating the full stack, including hardware.