Live data from Hacker News

Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

ciphercue.com

71–80 of 201 posts

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, and even in Italy we have Banca Sella (first one that comes to mind) which is a great way to collect payments with a local processor. But it's not Stripe... Stripe is not just an integration for Link or Card payments, and payment fees are actually not that bad. Developer experience matters most to me. Plus, I agree there are alternatives to a basic Stripe implementation, but what about Stripe Connec…

Right, because you're looking for a Stripe alternative, none of them will be. Did you actually try searching what I told you you could use as a search term? Have you looked into Mollie, Adyen, Klarna, Mangopay, Quickpay, etc? The list is quite large, there are options available but again, it requires you to proactively review and compare them, not just throw your hands in the air proclaiming "It's not Stripe".

Do you know of any EU payment processor that supports recurring payments like a SaaS would need (subscriptions, subscription state tracking, automatic retries of failed payments)?

I looked but couldn't find any. Adyen does not do this on its own AFAICT, only with 3rd party addons that implement recurring payments on top of it. Mollie claims it does this but is woefully incomplete (no failed payment retries for example), and appears to be all in on slop.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK Government just replaced Stripe with Ayden for most payments, so good suggestion. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/02/building-for-the-future-m...

There was a thread about it, and Ayden will not talk to you if you sell less than $5mm/yr using online payments.

This could be Adyen's opportunity for a growth spike if they seize it

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#73

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products? Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get clos…

For cyber security examples there are real movement in europe - ciphercue is trying to create a directory of alternatives which is gaining traction - https://ciphercue.com/directory/eu

Maybe going beyond cyber alternatives is whats needed

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#74

I did a similar study but analyzing actual API subdomains, and ignoring those fronted by Cloudflare, Akamai, etc and the conclusion was the opposite: European companied are more likely to be using OVH and Hetzner than AWS/Azure https://bloomberry.com/blog/we-analyzed-50k-apis-heres-which...

The main reason is that they are based locally, they charge in EUR, you can get the VAT back, and they are much more affordable than AWS.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK Government just replaced Stripe with Ayden for most payments, so good suggestion. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/02/building-for-the-future-m...

There was a thread about it, and Ayden will not talk to you if you sell less than $5mm/yr using online payments.

I think this is exactly the market Mollie is tapping in at the moment: "as feature complete as Ayden, but no need to run millions by us to be a first class citizen"

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#76

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products? Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get clos…

Funilly enough, payment might be the area where it's the easiest to find a credible european alternative. Adyen is an enormous PSP Mollie is aiming at smaller companies. Scaleway, OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak and others do have pre-packaged, managed services, but you might not find "eveything and anything" that you find at, say, AWS. The other side of the same coin is that you're as vendor-locked if you buid something wi…

Unfortunately service reliability of Scaleway was terrible last time we used them.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would i want an inferior option just because it's made in the EU? I'm not an EU nationalist, i don't care if "EU Tech Companies" are a thing. If anything "EU Tech Sovereignty" is a net negative for me.

Well, where do you live? I live in an EU country and care deeply for the right to erasure and our consumer rights. The EU legislature does some good things on that front. I "care" for EU tech companies as much as I can care for any company currently. I think technological sovereignty is and will be important moving forward, for our economic resilience, infrastructure stability, among other things. BTW "EU nationalist…

Which is why we’re putting our entire digital identification infrastructure in the hands of Google and Apple. EU technological sovereignty is a kafkaesque affair, and that’s putting it mildly.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#78
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seden is a success story, just as Estonia but instead doing that and god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US and be clear on the situation across all the EU since US is a 3rd party with much clear rights and obligations towards EU. AFAIK that's why the EU wants to have a 28th regime.

So is the US easier than the EU or not? Now you're saying Sweden is a "success story", does that mean it's easier than the US then? > god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US What? That doesn't make any sense. If I'm a Swedish resident, and I want to sell to Danes, then in no way is it easier for me to start a US company (?!) then sell to Denmark f…

Sweden is a success story by European standards but meh by US standards.

> If I'm a Swedish resident, and I want to sell to Danes, then in no way is it easier for me to start a US company (?!) then sell to Denmark from outside the EU

Starting a US company from EU costs a few hundred dollars depending on the broker etc. and indeed you may find it much more useful depending on how you do business(who you employ, what you sell and where are your clients). This is because EU single market isn't that single at all, you will need to figure out pensions, social contributions taxes etc across the EU borders for example but if you incorporate in US, life becomes much more easier as there are already many services geared to fascinate the trade between EU and US. So it depends.

Maybe things are easier from Sweden but then why not Europeans start company in Sweden instead of dealing with Germany for example? Do you by chance require residence and have residence-related obligations and costs? Why Sweden isn't Europe's Delaware and EU is trying to create 28th regime and the EU-inc then?

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#79

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products? Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get clos…

I'm italian too.

For payments I've used Mollie, which is EU based and has good DX. It also has something critical that Stripe does not: proper customer service. Adyen is also good.

You're a bit generic on other fronts but Scaleway is an excellent EU-based cloud provider. Haven't missed anything from AWS so far.

> Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe?

Why would you even want such a product? Managed postgres for cheap in the low 10s of Euros will scale to lots of users.

If your problem is scaling you have the best problem in the world, and one that most cloud vendors offer solutions for out of the box.

Neon is a great solution..which fits a handful of use cases.

US definitely enjoys an apex position in cloud services, but there's little to no core irreplaceable products beyond leading edge AI in European offerings.

Cloudflare might be an exception if latency, ddos protection and global reach are important.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#80
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market? After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for Europ…

> USA is/was easier to start business and get funding I think this would highly depend on the country. With a solid business plan, I could easily get funding via banks and literally start a company with the press of a button in web portal, in Sweden. Similarly, Estonia seems to have made it ridiculously easy as well. In Spain it's slightly harder, I have to fill out some forms, but with stable income, very easy to ge…

In Spain, if you fail at the business, do you have to pay back the bank loan?
Post reply on HN