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Posted by s_dev 11 hours ago

European Alternatives(european-alternatives.eu)
551 points | 294 commentspage 3
enopod_ 10 hours ago|
Wow, nice! Great resource, thanks a lot!
sublimefire 6 hours ago||
It is good to have a dedicated location to find these. The problem is that you want a sufficiently large company when buying the services so that it does not fall apart or get acquired and runs to the ground, and we have a few. Also, putting a country flag to the service is cringe, it might even be odd to some because it implies a specific language/culture. We just all want to consume a proper business staffed with pros and the one which does not resell AWS services.
johneth 7 hours ago||
Is this only for companies within the EU or EFTA? I can't spot a single UK company listed, even though there are plenty that would fit.
kieranmaine 7 hours ago||
On https://european-alternatives.eu/about the listing criteria state:

> The company is based in an EU, EEA, EFTA, or DCFTA member country or in the UK.

but

> For hosting providers: It is not allowed that a hosting provider is simply a sub-hosting provider of a company that is not based in an EU or EFTA member country.

s_dev 7 hours ago||
https://european-alternatives.eu/about

It's all clarified here. If you think it's missing some great companies add them!

rambambram 5 hours ago||
The open web is your European alternative, not the Silicon Valley-approach but then in Europe. That just invites the same abuse of data, the same enshittification and the same rent-seeking behavior.
hulitu 4 hours ago||
Funny, the first 3 are web analytics, cloud computing and CDN. So surveillance.

I would have expected an OS, an Office platform.

ogogmad 5 hours ago||
Alternatives to Amazon.com? I'm totally serious when asking about this. I think delivery apps (like the one comically named "Deliveroo") are all potential alternatives to Amazon, but I think they charge a premium.
dutchCourage 2 hours ago||
It depends where you live. There's no one company that's implented in all European countries. All countries have a shop similar to Amazon (often with fewer sponsored products and less drop shipping garbage). There are also a few specialized shops (for books, sports, electronics...). Since 2020 I only buy Amazon if they're significantly cheaper than other sellers. That's about 10% of my purchases.
mk89 5 hours ago|||
In DE probably Otto.de is the closest you get (?).

In NL I remember Bol was quite good.

wolvoleo 3 hours ago||
Yeah bol and coolblue are good in Holland
realityking 5 hours ago|||
For clothes Zalando is a big one.

Beyond that it gets fragmented into companies serving only a few markets. Alza, Cool Blue, and Media Markt are some that come to my mind.

202508042147 2 hours ago||
There's galaxus.com
layer8 1 hour ago||
Galaxus.eu, even.
troupo 7 hours ago||
Last time this came up I decided to try Scaleway which is at the top of their "cloud computing" list.

"European alternative" that doesn't know that European addresses have non-ASCII characters: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1835649083345649780

s_dev 7 hours ago|
I'm sure there are much bigger and more worthwhile criticisms to be had than this.

It's something they should fix and if they did would you suddenly switch to Scaleway? I think you would consider other factors first.

A good critique for example is OVH lost a lot of customer data due to a fire. Where was the redundancy? That would make me think twice before switching to OVH.

celsoazevedo 4 hours ago|||
> A good critique for example is OVH lost a lot of customer data due to a fire. Where was the redundancy? That would make me think twice before switching to OVH.

I lost a VPS in that fire, but I was up and running a few hours later with a new VPS at a different OVH location.

Not to deflect blame away from OVH and their large screw up, but we should never rely only on the redundancy of the hosting provider. Even on AWS, I wouldn't trust them to not lose my data if one of their datacenters burns down.

At the time I was making regular backups to two different providers with servers somewhere else. When I noticed that it was serious, I ordered a new VPS and restored everything. If OVH itself went down, I could have used Scaleway, Hetzner, Contabo, etc.

alberto-m 7 hours ago||||
A lack of Unicode support in 2026 is like someone coming with dirty clothes to a job interview: it might not affect too much how the work is done, but immediately raises doubts about the underlying level of professionalism.
troupo 7 hours ago||
That was 2024 (still inexcusable), they managed to fix it at one point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734771
u8080 7 hours ago||||
Hetzner/Linode were MITMing their client(jabber.ru): https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/
troupo 6 hours ago||
Was it Hetzner, or was it an attacker hosting on Hetzner/Linode?
direwolf20 6 hours ago||
It was the German equivalent of the NSA, with the German equivalent of a National Security Letter, sent to Hetzner to force them to intercept this customer's traffic. The same thing happens in the USA.
troupo 7 hours ago|||
> It's something they should fix and if they did would you suddenly switch to Scaleway?

You know why I have this screenshot? Because I literally tried to switch to "great European alternative" that is "as slick as DO".

After a third or a fourth screen, most of which felt completely isolated and disconnected from any previous ones, I gave up on the screen that couldn't handle a standard European address.

This was literally the point that I gave up.

So I went ahead... and signed up with Hetzner.

Edit

So I decided to try again. Literally the first page of account sign in tried to trick you into accepting tracking

Since I apparently had an account, I could login... So redirected to a subdomain with the same cookie popup. On a site that is solely for billing address collection

which then redirects you to a third domain with the a similar but different popup.

Which ends up on an empty page indistinguishable in "usability" from Hetzner (or worse)

That's the end of my experience of my "European DO that is Scaleway".

They did fix the addresss boxes, kudos to them

m00dy 5 hours ago||
we should have also claude-alternatives like projects that are entirely built by vibe-coders.
marsven_422 8 hours ago||
[dead]
hackomorespacko 10 hours ago|
[flagged]
OKRainbowKid 10 hours ago||
Be the change you want to see in this world.
po1nt 10 hours ago||
Do you have a license to ask these questions?
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