Mar 21, 2025 07:00:00

A record of actually breaking away from American cloud services such as Office 365, Bitwarden, GitHub, Google, Cloudflare, and DockerHub

Cloud services provided via the Internet, such as Gmail and Office 365, can be used for free or by paying a regular flat-rate fee, and have become indispensable in modern life. Martin Hols, a freelance developer living in the Netherlands, has written a blog about his experience of replacing his American cloud service with another one.

Moving away from US cloud services by Martijn Hols

https://martijnhols.nl/blog/moving-away-from-us-cloud-services

Hols cited the reasons for wanting to move away from reliance on American cloud services as privacy concerns, with data-sharing agreements between the EU and the US repeatedly being scrapped, showing a lack of legal compatibility regarding the protection of personal data, and the political situation in the US, which increases the risk that each country's digital infrastructure will be subject to US policies.

◆Microsoft Office 365
Migrating from Microsoft Office 365 was a top priority for Holus, as it contains email history, calendars and important files that he is legally required to retain.

Horus chose ' Proton ' as his migration destination. Proton Business Suite, which offers email, calendar, VPN, Pass, and 1TB of cloud storage, costs 12.99 euros (about 2,100 yen) per month and, like Microsoft, offers comprehensive support for teams. The migration process was very easy thanks to the tools, and data import was completed in just a few clicks. The only thing that had to be done manually was updating the DNS for the domain. In addition, Proton allows the setting of 15 custom email domains, and the advantage of being able to cancel and consolidate all separate email hosting is that Horus said it provides a better experience than Microsoft products.

◆Bitwarden
Hols, who used the password management service Bitwarden daily for more than four years, said he was initially hesitant to switch password managers, but he was concerned that even though the vault was encrypted, it was still hosted by Bitwarden and that they could restrict access at their discretion, so he looked into alternatives.

Proton Pass, part of the Proton Business Suite, has all the features I was using with Bitwarden, plus some extra features like sharing passwords via link and bringing back dropdowns on login forms. The migration process was easier than email, as I simply exported from Bitwarden and imported into Proton Pass, and everything was transferred seamlessly, including my TOTP codes and secure notes.

◆Docker Hub
Docker Hub, a container sharing service, was essential to Mr. Horus, storing private images that servers automatically retrieve to install new versions of apps. However, Mr. Horus had long been dissatisfied with Docker's focus on corporate customers, and had several problems in the past, so he decided to cancel the service.

Initially, they considered self-hosting a European-based Docker registry with an S3-compatible backend, and considered

OVH and Scaleway Object Storage , but decided that a self-hosted Docker registry was too complicated. Instead, they chose Scaleway Container Registry . According to Hols, Scaleway Container Registry is fully managed, easy to use, and allows images to be stored within Europe. He said he was pleased that the setup took just two hours and that it could be operated at a cost of less than 1 euro (about 160 yen) per month.

◆Cloudflare/Google DNS
Holus had used DNS servers from Cloudflare and Google, but these too raised concerns about privacy issues and reliance on American infrastructure.

Hols chose the Swiss-based free DNS service Quad9 as an alternative. Switching to Quad9 was very easy, just set the Quad9 DNS IP on your router or install a provisioning profile on your mobile device. Hols said that this only concerns Cloudflare's DNS server (1.1.1.1), and does not mention name servers or CDNs.

◆Google Search
Hols said that the transition from Google Search was particularly challenging. He chose a Dutch search engine called Startpage as an alternative. Startpage promises 'uncompromising privacy' and the quality of its search results was surprisingly high.

But then he was disappointed to discover that Startpage was actually a Google proxy, Hols said. It's unclear how much Startpage's reliance on Google will affect privacy, but Hols said, 'It doesn't completely eliminate our reliance on American cloud services, but it's much better than using Google directly.' He also argued that using a privacy-focused proxy is probably the only viable option at this stage.

Services that have not yet been migrated but are planned
As for GitHub, Hols says he considers the risk relatively low because the site doesn't store any personal data and he keeps copies of repositories on his PC and in backups, and he hasn't yet explored alternatives.

They also plan to migrate npm (Node Package Registry), a JavaScript package management system, but have not been able to do so. npm downloads necessary packages during the CI build process and when cloning a project, so if npm becomes unavailable, most development tools will not work.

Holus searched for a public mirror of npm based in Europe but was unable to find one. His plan is to use his past experience using Verdaccio as a private registry and cache, and set it up using Docker images. However, he needs to set up persistent storage first, which he plans to do shortly. This way, even if npm becomes unavailable, the version he is using will still be accessible, and other users can start working with the registry.

In conclusion, Hols said that with increasing risks in terms of both privacy and infrastructure management, it is time to reduce reliance on American cloud services, and recommended prioritizing consideration of European cloud services when using new services.