EU-first infrastructure: why it matters for your startup

Every week I talk to a founder who has their database on a US-East AWS region, their CDN on Cloudflare (Cayman Islands-registered), and a vague plan to 'sort out GDPR later.' By the time they want to sell to an enterprise customer in Germany or Sweden, that plan costs six figures to untangle.

What EU-first actually means

EU-first doesn't mean avoiding good tooling — it means making intentional choices early. Hetzner (Germany/Finland) for VPS. Aiven (Finland) for managed PostgreSQL. Bunny CDN (Slovenia) for global edge with EU-only storage zones. Resend for transactional email with GDPR-compliant logging. None of these compromise developer experience. Most of them are cheaper than their US equivalents.

Data residency is a sales argument

In B2B SaaS, especially in healthcare, finance, and government-adjacent sectors, data residency is a requirement — not a preference. A Swedish healthcare provider will not sign a data processing agreement with a company that can't guarantee EU-only storage. Getting this right at the start means you don't lose those deals later.

The practical stack

For most of the platforms I build: Next.js on a Hetzner VPS (Coolify or Caddy + PM2 for process management), PostgreSQL on Aiven with automated backups, and Bunny CDN for static assets. Authentication via NextAuth.js or Clerk (EU data region). Payments via Mollie (Dutch, EU-regulated). This stack handles everything from a 100-user cabin booking system to a multi-tenant SaaS with thousands of monthly active users.

Where to start

If you're starting a new project and you plan to serve European customers, make EU-first the default — not the retrofit. It's a one-time decision that affects every architecture choice downstream. If you're already running on US infrastructure and need to migrate, that's a conversation worth having early rather than when a contract depends on it.