alt Hacker NewsAs an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products?
Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get close to these products / companies and what they offer? Managed environments, automatic scaling, serverless architectures that just work and cover all your needs?
I'm a big fan of Hetzner, which has great prices, a great managed environment and lot of features that give you a reliable structure to work on, but I don't actually want to manage everything by myself.
I also use Bunny.net for my products, but the services are still limited and contained to very specific stuff.
Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe?
I believe that the problem is mainly structural and cultural. When a new technology comes out, it's usually from US researchers and companies. So how does Europe even stand a (real) chance at giving the world (or the continent) the best packaged services?
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> is there a real alternative that covers what they do?
Have you tried searching the internet for things like "European Stripe alternatives" and things like that? Or you tend to rely on word of mouth and similar?
I won't claim there are 100% replacements available for everything, but for all the basic functionality of Stripe, Cloudflare, AWS and so on there are tons of options out there, seemingly growing every month, but it does require you to proactively go out and look for them, rather than relying on that you've heard about it since before.
Most of the 13 root dns servers are American. They're distributed geographically but still owned by American entities
For cyber security examples there are real movement in europe - ciphercue is trying to create a directory of alternatives which is gaining traction - https://ciphercue.com/directory/eu
Maybe going beyond cyber alternatives is whats needed
Adyen is a big payment processor from the Netherlands which many EU retailers already use. Even with some worldwide customers.
Asking for a complete replacement is how people get locked in. The way governments end up with m365 by putting out an RFP with the exact feature list of m365. Of course then you limit yourself to only one option.
I think this will start moving a lot now that people are really aware of American dependency and also ethically are opposed to it.
OVH is much more developed on the managed side, they even have managed k8s as a service.
And you know their infra generally works, you know when it's not on fire.
And when it is, well you are not going to be the only one down.
Stripe is stupidly expensive ; I have Mollie and Ingenico with tailored deals which make Stripe seems like the dumbest thing you can do. I don't know what their defaults are, but I tried to reason with Stripe and they said i'm too small; no problem with these two. And I can drive to their HQ and ask what's up if anything is up, which I would prefer even at higher fees.
I'm italian too.
For payments I've used Mollie, which is EU based and has good DX. It also has something critical that Stripe does not: proper customer service. Adyen is also good.
You're a bit generic on other fronts but Scaleway is an excellent EU-based cloud provider. Haven't missed anything from AWS so far.
> Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe?
Why would you even want such a product? Managed postgres for cheap in the low 10s of Euros will scale to lots of users.
If your problem is scaling you have the best problem in the world, and one that most cloud vendors offer solutions for out of the box.
Neon is a great solution..which fits a handful of use cases.
US definitely enjoys an apex position in cloud services, but there's little to no core irreplaceable products beyond leading edge AI in European offerings.
Cloudflare might be an exception if latency, ddos protection and global reach are important.
There are plenty of alternatives to Stripe. Just search for card processors. If you’re a high-risk merchant, or your product falls into a high-risk category, Stripe will probably reject you. That’s why there’s a big market for other processors to step in.
There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market?
After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for European base and EU is trying hard to clean up the field with things like EU-inc, digital Euro, common markets etc but its not happening fast enough to make a difference today.
Maybe if all goes well and Trump can finish his term or even invades Greenland then EU can have its "tech", but for now its happening slowly because its primarily driven by the hypothetical risks that are convincingly real but but costly to act on.
Out of curiosity. There aren't any payment card processors other than Stripe? I thought I saw bunch of them.
Funilly enough, payment might be the area where it's the easiest to find a credible european alternative. Adyen is an enormous PSP Mollie is aiming at smaller companies.
Scaleway, OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak and others do have pre-packaged, managed services, but you might not find "eveything and anything" that you find at, say, AWS. The other side of the same coin is that you're as vendor-locked if you buid something with one component at SCW, one at Hetzner and the third at Infomaniak... (but you have to manage 3 different invoices...)