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 Garden

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

Privacy

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·February 6, 2026·

3 min read

If your reason for moving off Garden 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

Garden's appeal is that it can build a picture of your network from the channels you connect - mail, calendar, social - and surface who you're drifting from. Contact Book deliberately does none of that: we never read your email, calendar, or social accounts. You log what you choose, and nothing else is observed. Pick Garden if auto-surfacing your network from your accounts is the value you want; pick us if "the tool reads my channels" is exactly the line you don't want crossed, and you'd rather keep a deliberate, private record hosted in Germany.

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. Garden'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 Garden: EU comparison

	Ours Contact Book	Theirs Garden
Hosted in Germany
Reads your mail / social to build the graph
Auto-suggests who to reach out to
Per-person cadence you set
Conversation log
Life events + gifts		Limited
Family / relationship graph		Network-style
Works without connecting accounts		Core needs sync

When to pick which

Pick Contact Book when

You don't want any tool reading your email, calendar, or social accounts.

You'd rather decide who matters yourself than have a graph inferred for you.

Hosting in Germany and a no-sync, no-tracking posture matter to you.

Pick Garden when

You genuinely want the tool to surface your network automatically from your accounts.

Connecting mail and social to get suggestions is a trade you're happy to make.

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

Finn Glas

Co-Founder + Engineering

Finn is one of the Co-Founders. He owns the engineering side, the infrastructure, and most of the late-night fixes that ship before anyone notices.

finn.glas at aicuflow dot comLinkedIn Website