De-Googling: Moving data to Europe
I’ve been looking at moving away from big American tech companies over the past couple of weeks. I’m appalled that Google and Meta are rolling back their DEI policies. I am also acutely aware that my data is stored in America and cutting off access is not an unlikely move by the current government if it wants to flex its geopolitical muscles.
For many of us, online documents means Google Docs and website analytics mean Google Analytics. Lots of the prominent email marketing platforms are hosted in America.
But there alternative European-based providers – and I’ve found in some cases, they are cheaper.
Researching the options
This is not an overnight project. Thankfully, there’s a very useful website listing European alternatives for digital products. I’m going to walk you through what I’ve chosen but other providers might work better for you.
There is an affiliate link for one of the companies listed in this article. If you become a paying customer then I might get a payment.
An alternative to Google Workspace
This was first on my list. I’ve been using Google Workspace for about 7 years so it is well and truly embedded in my business. Could I find something similar?
I came across KSuite from Infomaniak (great name, huh?) It’s based in Switzerland and it provides:
- Wordprocessing
- Spreadsheets
- Video conferencing
- Chat
- Email newsletters
- Cloud computing
- Website hosting
There’s a free version which gives you everything you can get in Microsoft Office or Google Drive as well as email and a Zoom/Teams equivalent. It does have some quirks, for instance you can only access word count as a plugin but that’s easily sorted.
The paid for version is remarkably cheap and you can put together a package using the bits of the platform you want, for example, you can buy credits for sending newsletters.
Don’t worry if everything is in French when you start. Just click on ‘my account’ in the top right hand corner to change the language.
It does need you to connect your domain to your account, if you have one. Your website developer can do this for you, it only takes a few minutes.
I haven’t cancelled my Google Workspace account yet because I haven’t had time to sort everything out so I can be sure I won’t lose something. As I said, this is not an overnight project!
A nice bonus to KDrive was finding that when I installed it on my phone, it took over backing up my photos and videos.
Taking notes
I love Google Keep. I used it All. The. Time. Of all the things I was sad about when I started thinking about how to de-Google my life, the loss of Keep was the one that really upset me.
So I was delighted when Infomaniak persuaded me to install jtx Board on my phone. At first I was suspicious: ‘what is this random app?’ I thought. It turned out to be a lovely open source tool giving you a journal, notes, and tasks. Problem solved!
A Notion alternative
Ironically, I finally found a way of using Notion that I liked a couple of months ago. I’d got a good collection of documents going with labels that made sense. Now I could have just accepted it and created a filing system in KDrive but a little bit of research showed there are a number of alternatives to Notion available.
The one I have chosen is Anytype. It’s very similar to Notion, open source, and it sits on my computer instead of on the web.
My Google Analytics swap
I have three websites. Just before I started this project I gave myself a challenge to see if I could grow traffic to my business blog organically without using X or Meta platforms. So I need a way of measuring what’s happening on my sites.
The option I went for is Simple Analytics (affiliate link). The interface is really nice. It has a Google Analytics importer so your existing data isn’t lost. There is a free version but it only lets you keep 30 days of data.
A bonus of using Simple Analytics is that because they don’t use tracking cookies on your website you don’t need to have a cookie bar popping up on your website.
My only bugbear is that if you want to screen out your own IP address so you’re not counting yourself in your visitor stats, you have to pay for the Team level subscription instead of the more cost-effective ‘Simple’ subscription.
An ongoing project
I have more services to go through so there may well be another one of these updates at some point. If you’ve got any questions or suggestions, let me know.
