April 12, 2026
Cloud Wars: Euro Edition
Building a SaaS in 2026 Using Only EU Infrastructure
EU-only SaaS? Fans cheer, skeptics shout “CLOUD Act!” and AI panic ensues
TLDR: A new guide says you can build a full software business on European services instead of U.S. giants. Commenters applaud more competition but argue AI tools still tie you to U.S. providers and warn U.S. data laws may still reach Europe; others suggest adding ClouDNS and Adyen as alternatives.
Europe just dropped a full “you don’t need Big Tech” shopping list for building software-as-a-service: Hetzner for bargain servers, Scaleway for managed goodies, Mollie for payments, Bunny.net for speedy delivery, and privacy-first analytics like Plausible or Simple Analytics. Email? Pick Ahasend, Lettermint, or MailerLite. The guide says yes, you can go all‑EU in 2026—no AWS, no Stripe, no Google—and the comments lit up.
The loudest cheer? Anti‑monopoly vibes. One user basically framed it as Europe versus the U.S. tech juggernaut, competition at last. But the plot twist came fast: the AI elephant in the room. Devs warned that for anything “smart,” you still end up calling U.S. AI services. Mistral exists, sure, but commenters say the tools around it are thinner. Cue nervous laughter.
Then came the legal drama. A skeptical voice warned that U.S. law (the CLOUD Act) can still reach data if a provider has U.S. operations—“even in Europe,” they claim. Meanwhile, feature‑hungry shoppers piled on with extras: add ClouDNS for DNS, and why not Adyen for payments?
Between the “Euro‑stack now!” crowd and the “AI and law will pull you back” skeptics, the thread reads like a heist movie: can the EU crew really pull off a clean break from Big Tech? Stay tuned.
Key Points
- •The guide claims a full EU-only SaaS stack is feasible in 2026 across all core layers.
- •Hetzner and Scaleway are recommended for hosting/compute, with differing ops trade-offs and EU data center locations.
- •Mollie is presented as the EU alternative to Stripe, supporting key European payment methods and subscriptions.
- •Bunny.net is suggested as a cost-effective EU-owned CDN with global PoPs and usage-based pricing.
- •Plausible, Simple Analytics, Ahasend, Lettermint, and MailerLite cover analytics and transactional email needs with privacy and free-tier options.