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

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Contact Book: the EU alternative to Vibe-coded DIY

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

DIY

Build vs buy

Vibe coding

Finn GlasCo-Founder + Engineering

·April 4, 2026·

2 min read

If your reason for moving off Vibe-coded DIY 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

Vibe-coding your own personal CRM is genuinely satisfying for the first weekend. Contact Book earns its place around month three, when you realise you've spent twenty hours patching CSV import bugs, fighting with auth, and still don't have reminders firing reliably. The cost isn't the build - it's the long tail of being your own product team for one user.

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. Vibe-coded DIY'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 Vibe-coded DIY: EU comparison

	Ours Contact Book	Theirs Vibe-coded DIY
Hosted in Germany		Whatever you pick
Initial setup	5 minutes	1 weekend
Total time over 2 years	~5 hours	~80+ hours
Reliable cadence reminders		If you build a worker
Live multi-tab updates
Mobile UI		DIY
Backups + disaster recovery
Updates + security patches
MCP server / agent integration		If you build it
Free tier		Hosting cost
Yours to fork
Yours to walk away from

When to pick which

Pick Contact Book when

You want a tool that already works on Sunday evening, not one you're still patching by Sunday at midnight.

Your time is worth more than €1/month.

You'd rather spend the weekend on the actual people in your contact list than on the tool.

Pick Vibe-coded DIY when

Building it is the point - you'd write it for the practice, not the product.

You have very specific needs none of the existing tools nail.

You want every byte to live on hardware you physically control, and you have the time to operate it.

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