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 Google Contacts

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

Comparison

Julia YukovichCo-Founder + CEO

·April 18, 2026·

2 min read

If your reason for moving off Google Contacts 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

Google Contacts is excellent at what it does: keeping a phone-shaped address book in sync across your devices. Contact Book is built for the next layer up - logging conversations, gifts, life events, and follow-ups so the relationships you care about don't quietly drift apart. If you only need names + numbers on your phone, stick with Google. If you find yourself opening a contact card and asking what did we last talk about, you'll outgrow Google Contacts the same week you try 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. Google Contacts'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 Google Contacts: EU comparison

	Ours Contact Book	Theirs Google Contacts
Hosted in Germany
Stores names + phone numbers
Syncs across devices
Conversation log per contact
Life events + birthdays		Birthdays only
Gifts given / received
Follow-up reminders
Stay-in-touch cadence
Pets attached to contacts
Custom fields per contact		Limited
Used by your phone's dialer
Free tier

When to pick which

Pick Contact Book when

You want a memory layer on top of your address book, not just a phonebook.

You like to log who you spoke with and what about, so the next conversation picks up cleanly.

Birthdays, gifts, family relationships, pet names - all of it matters, and you want it in one place.

Your data should live in Germany, exportable + deletable on your own.

Pick Google Contacts when

You only need names, numbers, and email synced to your phone's dialer + Gmail autocomplete.

Everything else lives in Calendar, Photos, and Drive, and you want one Google account to manage it.

Free + integrated with Android / Gmail is the only thing that matters to you.

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