Sustainable Cloud Providers in Europe

2020-12-27 --- Jörn Franke

I recently moved my web page and blog from an American cloud provider to an European one. Furthermore, I moved my email from an American provider to an European one. There were several reasons for this:

• Many cloud providers that have data centers using renewable energy sources and energy providers that do active research in progressing with renewable energy sources
• Transparency what the cloud providers do with my money and in which campains they engage (publicly available information)
• Data privacy laws in Europe protect people visiting my web page, blog and sending me emails much better
• Secure technologies supporting, for example, latest protocols (e.g. HTTP2/HTTP3), data encryption so that even the provider cannot access it, automatic infrastructure updates, Two Factor Authentication (2FA) and passwordless login using open source hardware tokens
• No advertisement and tracking
• Reasonable costs (I spend much more on coffee)

I do not want to make publicity for the providers I used, because you find plenty of them all over Europe and the world. Just keep your eyes open for criteria important to you. I can reassure you - the costs are very low and everyone can afford this step.