Store locally, deploy globally

I had a lot if ideas and vibe-coded several projects to bring my ideas live. But there is something which keeps me from deploying and promoting them. And this something is responsibility for the users data and security.

Unfortunately, vibe coding does not have a good track when it comes to security and data protection. If you are not a security expert but a designer like me, you have to make really big effort and make a lot of research to make your product secure. (And even with a lot of effort it not guaranteed that you succeed because you have to consider so much and it may not be possible to secure everything if you are without technical background.

So I tried to find Europe-made and hosted options to keep my and users data the continent but that seemed really not easy. Here are several tools I assessed and my experiences.

Lets begin with tools for private use and communication with the clients.

Mail and calendar

For mail and calendar, I switched to Proton .

Really nice apps and easy switch from other services. Still testing integrations with other services and adding events from the other sources, but it is a great beginning.

Messenger

To communicate on the way, I switched to Threema. The usability and functionality is not very high unfortunately. For example I miss the convenient way to create communities and channels as well as to deploy chatbots like in other tools. But the tool has the highest security standards. It really seems that good security always comes with trade-offs regarding usability.

Browser

As for browser, nothing beats Ecosia for me. I really like that you can plant trees simply by surfing or you can install Chrome plugins in it.

AI assistant

There are actually several alternatives regarding AI Assistants. As i already used Proton products, I decided to switch to Lumo, their friendly and privacy-first AI assistant. Unfortunately, the app keeps crashing on my mobile, but seems to work good on desktop. Great for daily tasks, creating copy drafts and just answering questions. Next step would be to try integrating the tool into actual project.

Low Code and CMS

One of the best tools I am using is Framer, which is runnign and hosting my site. Really like to build sites on it. Framer states they are located in the EU themselves and are fully GDPR-compliant. According to their community support, "all personal data Framer processes for its users is stored on EU-based data centers." While Framer uses AWS (which has EU regions), the exact specific AWS regions where your data resides isn't clearly documented in public sources. As a non-technical user, quite tricky to research such topics :-( The eCommerce integration and Swiss payment options ( via Stripe) make it really great for implementing different kinds of ideas.

Calendar and booking

For calendar integration, I used Calenso as my primary tool as it integrates Swiss-specific payment methods and is nDSG compliant. However, it is quite tricky to integrate it into framer website and with my Proton calendar. :-(

Analytics

While Framer has some analytics built-in, it is sometimes limited for UX research and optimization purposes. As an analytics tool, I use Friendly. Absolutely love the heatmap function! The the fact that you can use the analytics without cookie banner.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, using European tools comes with some usability drawbacks. (It is quite sad that some of them have such a poor usability and are not so accessible to the average users). Also they lack integration between each other. For example, Calenso lacks proper integration with Framer or Proton calendar).

Regarding Vibe Coding, there is still no accessible ways to ensure your users data protection. Low coding on secure-aware and Europe-based platforms (with the limitations it brings) seems the only way to bring compliant and secure web products. It would really help if the tools would focus more on the ways to make security and compliance easy for non-technical users.