Although Communiteq (formerly DiscourseHosting) is based in the Netherlands we have primarily been delivering our services from data centers in Washington DC and San Francisco to customers worldwide. In the past months many of our European customers have been asking us whether we could host their forum in a data center within the European Union. We have always welcomed these requests and we have been moving their forums into our hosting location in a Leaseweb data center in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. However, this was a âspecialâ option that we only offered to customers that were specifically demanding it.
If your main audience is in Europe, itâs not just about getting more speed for your forum. With the upcoming GDPR - the new European privacy law, effective May 2018 - in mind, we see a rising demand for compliant services. Since this is strategically important for a significant amount of our customers, it is also a strategic choice for us.
That is why we are introducing a number of new plans today, offering forum hosting from the Leaseweb data center in Frankfurt am Main. This data center is SOC-1, ISO 27001 and PCI/DSS certified and satisfies the highest ecological standards by using energy that comes 100% from hydroelectric sources.
The offsite backups and outgoing email are also handled from a data center within the European Union, so youâre perfectly safe with this setup.
If you really want to keep your corporate lawyers happy, the EU Business plan includes an EU Directive 95/46/EC compliant data processing agreement!
See our plans at https://www.communiteq.com/pricing/
And: in the upcoming months, before the GDPR will be in effect next year, we will update the EU hosting plans with a special configuration that satisfies the GDPR âPrivacy by Designâ and âPrivacy by Defaultâ principles.