Shop hosting in europe

Deutsch Diskussion Shopify-Diskussionen
1

Hi there,

we are planning to implement a shop for one of our customers. The customer has the internal requirements, that they are only allowed to use services, that are hosted in Europe.
I know you will say EU-US Privacy Shield . . . etc. But no, that’s not valid anymore. And also our customer will strictly say no.
So, there is the question is there a possibility, to host shopify shops on a European cloud?

Best Ben

2

Hey @benbon

Thanks for your questions and this is the German community in case you want to discuss this in German. But English is fine too!

So regarding your question, I am no legal advisor but I thought that our Help Docs on the topic of GDPR might give you a good insight into how Shopify works closely together with German legal organisations like the Händlerbund and the IT Rechtskanzlei such as the certification that Shopify has received from these organisations:

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Shopify would not be able to showcase these “Prüfsiegel” if they were not certified by them.

Shopify believes strongly in protecting personal information, and understands that doing so is critical in helping you preserve the trust and confidence of your customers. Shopify has designed its platform to enable you to offer your customers transparency into and control over their personal information. We fully believe in making it easy for you to use this platform in a manner that complies with privacy and data protection laws in Germany and around the world.

But there are also some steps that you’ll need to take on your own when building your client’s store and I strongly recommend to consult with a legal expert like the Händlerbund or the IT Rechtskanzlei or Trusted Shops, who are all very familiar with online ecommerce and data protection laws.

However, if your client would prefer their own server hosting solution then some other platforms might be a better fit such as the following:

  • PrestaShop: An open-source platform based in France and you can host your PrestaShop store with any Europe-based web host of your choice.
  • Magento: While Magento is not based in Europe (it’s owned by Adobe, a US company), it’s a self-hosted solution, meaning you can host your Magento store on any server you want.
  • WooCommerce: Like Magento, WooCommerce is a self-hosted solution, so you can host your store on a server located in Europe. WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress, so you will need a WordPress site to use it.
  • Shopware: A Germany-based e-commerce solution which is popular in the German-speaking world.

As we currently have almost 100k merchants on our platform in Germany alone (which also include some larger “whiteglove clients” like Hertha BSC Berlin who moved from Shopware) and any legal complaints or issues are usually posted here in the community (for example Google Fonts has been a larger topic here in the community but is largely solved now), I can safely say that most issues are solved and our German merchants are quite happy with their stores on the Shopify Platform.

We also have a private FB Group here where 10k experienced German merchants and Experts converse and you can also post your questions there if you like!

Do you have further questions about the shop? Just enter a search term in the search bar at the top of the community landing page. Or let me know if you have any other questions about it or the shop and business and we can discuss it further here! Please keep an eye out in your email for notifications about answers to your questions in the community.