Moving my app subscriptions to Europe
Having talked about it for so long, it's finally time to put my money where my mouth is
The movement for European tech sovereignty is picking up speed nicely, with the French leading the way with their public sector moves (🫡). I'm doing a lot of talking about using European alternatives in my organization, but my own stack is due a migration too.
The services I aim to replace are:
- Ente Photos
- seems to be mostly Indian, but registered in the US
- will move to my existing Hetzner Nextcloud (Germany)
- Fastmail
- Bitwarden
- a great password manager, also supporting open source. US based
- this is happening now, but has no bearing on my choice to move. Maybe good timing, though
- will move to Proton Pass, a Swiss company
- a great password manager, also supporting open source. US based
- Kagi
- This might actually be too hard. First, there's no alternative paid search engine I know of. Also, they're making a new web browser
- maybe they will move to Europe? Please?
After that's done I don't think I've any active subscriptions to anything but European tech, but of course there are things like Humble Bundle or Patreon that will see some cash flow every now and then. All in all, though, the tide will be turned quite thoroughly.
As you can probably see, my list only includes 'nice' companies, and I still can recommend their products to anyone asking. However, I wish to make an effort to boost the European tech sector, and the easiest way to do that is by spending my money on our products (and trying to get everyone else on board too).
I've already started the migration work (although the subs won't expire until December...) and it's been pretty straightforward thus far.
I'll be writing a post about each one with more details, so stay tuned for the actual painful tradeoffs.
Thoughts, comments? Send me an email! (Fastmail, for now)