Is Contact Book subject to the CLOUD Act?

No. The CLOUD Act compels US-based companies (or US subsidiaries) to hand over data they control, regardless of where it physically lives. Contact Book has no US entity, no US contracts, and no US-controlled infrastructure in the data plane. Stripe processes payment data and is US-headquartered, but that boundary is well-defined: payment metadata only, never your records.

Where exactly is my data stored?

On dedicated servers we operate ourselves, physically located in Germany. The audit log, attachments, embeddings - everything in the data plane - lives there. Backups stay within the same EU jurisdiction in different physical locations and roll off on a 30-day window. We deliberately do not name the exact data centre - knowing the rack does not buy the customer anything and would make operator changes a public event.

Do you log IPs or session metadata to a US service?

No third-party analytics, no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no third-country tag manager. The first-party device + session ledger lives in our own Postgres + Redis - same EU boundary as the rest of the data plane. Logs are operational only and rotate at 30 days.

What happens if I'm a customer outside the EU?

You can use Contact Book from anywhere. The data still lives in the EU; the request travels from your location to our servers and back. That's a posture choice on our side, not a geo-restriction on yours.

Contact Book

Compare

Contact Book: the EU alternative to Dex

Same job, hosted in the EU. Contact Book runs in Germany under German law - your data stays in EU jurisdiction end to end.

EU alternative

Personal CRM

Networking

Julia YukovichCo-Founder + CEO

·December 31, 2025·

1 min read

If your reason for moving off Dex is data sovereignty, the comparison gets simpler. Contact Book is hosted in Germany on infrastructure we operate ourselves - no US-headquartered company in the request path. The CLOUD Act does not reach what physically lives here.

At a glance

Dex is sharply focused on "don't lose touch" - it adds reminders + activity tracking on top of LinkedIn-style integrations. Contact Book does that too, and adds gifts, life events, pets, family relationships, and a journal. If keep-in-touch reminders are 80% of what you want, Dex is excellent. If you also remember birthdays, family details, gift histories, and want all of it in one place, you're more at home with us.

EU jurisdiction

What 'EU-hosted' actually means here, end to end

Contact Book runs on dedicated machines we operate ourselves, physically located in Germany. There is no US-headquartered subprocessor in the request path - the data plane (your records, your files, your audit log) lives entirely in EU jurisdiction. Two third parties exist outside that boundary: Stripe (payment information only, under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) and the mail relay for transactional email. Neither sees your records. Dex's setup is the variable - if their primary infra is US-based, the CLOUD Act applies regardless of what their privacy page claims.

Contact Book vs Dex: EU comparison

	Ours Contact Book	Theirs Dex
Hosted in Germany
Stay-in-touch reminders
Activity log
LinkedIn import	Manual + CSV
Gifts tracker
Life events		Limited
Pets
Live multi-tab
Free tier

When to pick which

Pick Contact Book when

You want reminders plus the rest of the relationship surface (gifts, life events, family).

Hosting in Germany / EU jurisdiction matters to you.

Pick Dex when

LinkedIn integration is essential and you live in that network.

You really only want "don't lose touch" + nothing else - the smaller surface is the appeal.

EU-jurisdiction questions

Specific to where the data lives, who can subpoena it, and what crosses borders.

Start with Contact Book

Free plan, no credit card. We host in Germany. Export + delete are self-serve.

Written by

Julia Yukovich

Co-Founder + CEO

Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.

julia.yukovich at aicuflow dot comLinkedIn