10 Swiss or European alternatives to American digital technology

It reminds you of the shadow hanging over our heads, dependent on American solutions (long live Silicon Valley!) when it comes to digital technology… At O’matic, we try to rely as much as possible on local and sovereign solutions, whether Swiss or European, to compensate for Uncle Sam’s omnipresence over our data.

Although these services and software are used by millions of users, some diehards prefer to rely on alternative solutions for better costs, greater sovereignty, or simply to have total control.

With this in mind, we have designed this guide for you, covering various categories:

Web hosting services and domain names
Newsletter
AIs
Google as a whole

This guide is not exhaustive. Our research was based mainly on two directories: Swiss Made Software and European Alternatives.
We intentionally chose categories in which we have tested and approved solutions.

Web hosting services and domain names

Is it possible to avoid AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Google Cloud?

Although you may initially think that it is difficult to place your trust in smaller companies, please be aware that it is possible, and that is precisely what we offer.

Hosting your websites and applications requires you to have control over your data.

Swiss and European web hosting alternatives

Several Swiss and European companies offer services similar to or even equivalent to those of Google and Amazon in terms of hosting:

Swiss alternatives

Infomaniak, based in Geneva, not far from our headquarters, offers a range of IT services, including web hosting that complies with nLPD and GDPR standards, ranging from shared infrastructure to bespoke services. They are fully committed to sustainable development and all their data centres are located in the Canton of Geneva.

Exoscale, headquartered in Lausanne, develops infrastructures and solutions closer to AWS, tailored to specific needs. The data centres are all located in Europe.

French alternatives

Our French neighbours are not to be outdone, with solutions such as OVH, which has a presence on four continents, and o2switch, whose data centres are located in France.

Newsletter tools

What are the best newsletter tools available today?

It is quite difficult to rank the best newsletter tools at the moment. However, the most well-known ones include names such as Hubspot, MailChimp and Klaviyo, which are hosted in the USA.

Of course, there are equally effective alternatives in Switzerland or Europe.

Swiss and European alternatives for creating your newsletter

Now that you understand the meaning of this article, here are some tools (some of which have been tested) similar to the ones mentioned above.

Swiss alternatives

Infomaniak is doing some amazing things! Directly from your account, you can create basic newsletters using six types of blocks, as shown in the video below.

The little extra? You earn newsletter credits as soon as you have a product with them! (domain name or email or web hosting)

French alternatives

At O’Matic, we use Brevo, a GDPR-compliant French service that offers all kinds of sales and marketing tools, including CRM and automation, with a free plan and multiple options! We can only recommend it!

European alternatives

During our research, we also found Omnisend, created by Lithuanians and headquartered in London. With its slightly offbeat communication, the tool caught our eye!

AIs

Every day, AIs are gaining more and more market share, in more and more tools designed to make users’ lives easier. As a ‘pure’ AI, we are all familiar with ChatGPT, the first to democratise AI and remain at the cutting edge of technology with its integrated GPTs and external integrations.

Is there really an alternative to ChatGPT in Europe or Switzerland?

Although finding a similar solution may seem complicated at first glance, we have two references that we have tested and approve of.

kChat Bot, now Euria, the Swiss alternative to Infomaniak

In 2024, we had many discussions with kChat Bot, integrated into Infomaniak’s chat software, kChat, which helped us overcome numerous moments of writer’s block or code errors!

Depuis quelques mois, c’est Euria (également disponible en app mobile) qui a pris sa place et nous l’utilisons presque tous les jours pour nous sortir d’impasses !

Mistral AI’s Chat, the closest French alternative to ChatGPT

Released in 2025 as a mobile app, we gradually switched to Mistral AI, an AI created by our French neighbours. Le Chat, accessible on the web or as an app, offers the same services and features as ChatGPT.

What’s more, Mistral aims to make AI accessible to everyone and is modular for developers… Everything you need to bring great projects to life in the future!

What about Google?

What doesn’t Google do? Where aren’t they present? That’s kind of the million-dollar question. With its strong presence on the web, Google is a benchmark in search engines, email, analytics, drive, and more. What are the alternatives? Can we really do without them?

Alternatives to Google Search

Swiss alternatives (yes, we found one!)

We thought we didn’t have one, but there is an alternative to the Google search engine: Swisscows (which also offers an email service and a VPN)!

Swisscows protects data and respects privacy. No cookies are used and content is filtered to make the web safer.

French alternatives

We have named Qwant and Lilo as French alternatives!

Like Swisscows, Qwant does not store any data and also offers a search engine designed for children… A truly safe place!

Lilo, meanwhile, is a simple way to fund projects drop by drop. Every time you search, you receive a drop of water that you can then donate to a cause close to your heart.

European alternatives

Ecosia is an eco-friendly search engine that uses 80% of its profits to fund tree planting projects around the world.

Alternatives to Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

Swiss alternatives (yes, we found one too!)

Not yet tested, but it won’t be long (probably on this site), we found Friendly Analytics during our research, we’ll let you know more about it soon!

Open source alternative outside the EU

We are going to digress slightly to tell you about the open-source service Matomo, a New Zealand-based company, which is the best-known open-source alternative to Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Matomo can be hosted on the server of your choice, making it a very good solution that we have already tested!

Alternatives to email, calendar and drive services

Swiss alternatives

It’s hard to break old habits… That’s why Infomaniak (always them, they do so many things at once!) and Proton both find themselves in this category.

At O’Matic, we use Infomaniak for our internal drive and for our emails, and we are very happy with it!

Proton, whose headquarters are also located not far from ours, is Infomaniak’s direct competitor in this category. We haven’t been able to test their services, but we’ve heard good things about them!

Must we necessarily limit ourselves to local solutions?

Yes and no, the answer is not straightforward.

Yes, because data protection is central to Swiss and European legislation, which is not the case across the Atlantic. The NSA has the right to access data hosted on American servers.

No, because there are solutions that take personal information outside our walls into account (e.g. Matomo, mentioned above).

Furthermore, the ability to set up your own services using open source technologies allows you to respect all stakeholders in a project.

The transition to a local digital alternative also requires comprehensive work on corporate strategy. At O’Matic, we believe in the power of these solutions. The transition cannot be achieved overnight. That is why we support companies in their move towards more independent and sovereign solutions.

Are you interested in switching to a local solution? Contact us! We will do our utmost to help you find the solution that best suits your needs.