--- title: "Best EU-Hosted Email APIs in 2026: GDPR-Friendly Alternatives Compared" description: "The best EU-hosted email APIs of 2026 compared: Lettermint, Sweego, MailPace, Brevo, Mailjet and Reloop on data location, company jurisdiction, pricing, features and what GDPR actually requires." canonical: "https://reloop.sh/blog/eu-email-api-providers-2026" last-updated: "2026-10-25" --- # Best EU-Hosted Email APIs in 2026: GDPR-Friendly Alternatives Compared > For the site documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). Docs index: [llms-docs.txt](/llms-docs.txt). Marketing corpus: [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt). Docs corpus: [llms-full-docs.txt](/llms-full-docs.txt). Product skill: [skill.md](/skill.md). Prefer markdown URLs (append `.md`) when available. > The best EU-hosted email APIs of 2026 compared: Lettermint, Sweego, MailPace, Brevo, Mailjet and Reloop on data location, company jurisdiction, pricing, features and what GDPR actually requires. Source: https://reloop.sh/blog/eu-email-api-providers-2026 Published: 2026-10-25 **The short version:** if you want a hosted email API run by a European company on European infrastructure, look at **Lettermint** (Netherlands), **Sweego** (France) or **MailPace** (UK company, EU-hosted). If you also need marketing, **Brevo** and **Mailjet** are the established EU-based suites. **Reloop** works for EU teams both ways: Reloop Cloud runs on Hetzner, a German hosting company, with EU data centers, and it's open source, so you can also self-host it on any EU server. We build Reloop, so weigh our entry accordingly. Where we're the better or worse pick, we say so. Every fact about another provider comes from its own website or docs, linked in each section. --- ## Top picks at a glance | Category | Pick | Why | |---|---|---| | **Best EU-owned, EU-hosted API** | Lettermint | Dutch B.V., hosted in Europe, ISO 27001:2022 | | **Best French-hosted option with SMS** | Sweego | OVHcloud and Scaleway in France, email and SMS | | **Best privacy-first transactional** | MailPace | EU-hosted, never tracks opens or clicks | | **Best open-source option, hosted or self-hosted** | Reloop | Cloud on Hetzner (EU), or self-host under Apache 2.0 | | **Best EU-based marketing suite** | Brevo | Paris HQ, email, SMS, WhatsApp and CRM | | **Best established EU-hosted ESP** | Mailjet | EU data centers, strong drag-and-drop editor | --- ## First: what "GDPR-friendly" actually means This isn't legal advice. Talk to your DPO or counsel for your own situation. But a few points clear up most of the confusion. 1. **GDPR doesn't require EU hosting.** It requires a lawful basis for processing, a data processing agreement (DPA) with your email provider, and a valid transfer mechanism whenever personal data leaves the EEA. 2. **Email providers process personal data.** Recipient addresses, names in templates and event logs are all personal data, so your provider is a processor and you need a signed DPA and a list of its sub-processors. 3. **Transfers outside the EEA need a mechanism.** The usual ones are an adequacy decision (such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for certified US companies) or Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) plus a transfer risk assessment. 4. **Schrems II is why teams still care.** In 2020 the EU's top court struck down Privacy Shield and said SCCs alone aren't enough if the destination country's surveillance laws undermine them. The Data Privacy Framework replaced Privacy Shield, but it has faced legal challenges, and many teams prefer not to depend on it. 5. **Location and jurisdiction are different questions.** Data in a Frankfurt data center run by a US company can still be subject to US law (the CLOUD Act). If that's your concern, look at who owns the provider and its hosting, not only where the servers are. That gives you three levels to choose from: - **EU-hosted:** servers are in the EU. - **EU-hosted and EU-owned:** the provider and its hosting are European companies. - **Self-hosted:** you run it, so you decide both. --- ## The comparison table | | Lettermint | Sweego | MailPace | Brevo | Mailjet | Reloop | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | **Company based in** | Netherlands | France | UK | France (Paris) | France, owned by Sinch (Sweden) | Reloop Labs | | **Data hosted** | Europe | France (OVHcloud, Scaleway) | EU | EU (OVH, Google Cloud) | EU (Google Cloud) | Hetzner (Germany), multi-region; or your own server | | **Free tier** | 300 / mo | 100 / day | 100 / mo, on request | 300 / day | 6,000 / mo (200 / day) | 3,000 / mo (100 / day); unlimited self-hosted | | **Entry paid plan** | €10 for 10k | €10 (Individual) | $10 for 10k | From $9 for 5k | From $9 | $10 for 50k | | **~50k / mo** | €40 (Starter) | Individual (20k–50k range) | Slider | Slider | $40 (Essential) / $59 (Premium) | $10 (Pro) | | **~100k / mo** | €85 for 125k (Starter) | From €79 (Startup, 100k–200k) | Slider | Slider | $112 (Premium) | $20 (Growth) | | **Marketing / broadcasts** | Yes | No (transactional and SMS) | No (transactional only) | Yes | Yes | Yes + automations | | **Inbound email** | Webhooks | Not covered here | JSON webhooks | Webhook | Parse API | Mailboxes, API, MCP, IMAP | | **Open / click tracking** | Yes | Yes | **Never** | Yes | Yes | Per domain, can be turned off | | **Dedicated IP** | €50 / mo (Pro, 300k+) | Startup and up | No (shared only) | Higher tiers | Premium, on request | Included on Growth ($20) | | **Open source** | No | No | No | No | No | Yes (Apache 2.0) | Sources: [lettermint.co/pricing](https://lettermint.co/pricing), [sweego.io/pricing](https://www.sweego.io/pricing), [mailpace.com/pricing](https://mailpace.com/pricing), [brevo.com/pricing](https://www.brevo.com/pricing/), [mailjet.com/pricing](https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/), [reloop.sh/pricing](/pricing). Self-hosted Reloop has no per-email fee, only the server cost. "Slider" means the provider prices that volume interactively; check its page for an exact figure. Lettermint's prices are in euros, as are Sweego's. --- ## 1. Lettermint: best EU-owned, EU-hosted API [Lettermint](https://lettermint.co/) is a Dutch company (Lettermint B.V.) whose site says it is "built in the Netherlands" and "hosted in Europe". It covers transactional email, broadcasts and inbound in one product, with a REST API and SMTP relay. **Pricing:** free for 300 emails a month. Paid plans come in Starter, Growth and Pro, each priced by volume: 10,000 emails is €10, €13 or €15 a month, and 50,000 is €40, €45 or €55. A dedicated IP is €50 a month on Pro at 300,000 emails and up. Paid plans share one monthly volume across transactional, broadcast and inbound mail. **Strengths** - **European company, European hosting.** The simplest answer if your security review asks both "where" and "who". - **ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified**, which shortens vendor questionnaires. - Transactional, broadcast and inbound on one plan. - SDKs and integrations for Node, PHP, Python, Go and Laravel, among others. **Weaknesses** - More expensive than Reloop Cloud per email: €40 vs $10 at 50k. - Inbound mail is delivered by webhook, not stored as mailboxes. - Hosted-only. **Best for:** EU companies that want a modern hosted API and a clean answer on data sovereignty. --- ## 2. Sweego: best French-hosted option with SMS [Sweego](https://sweego.io/) is a French email and SMS platform from the team behind Mindbaz, a long-running French bulk-email company. Sweego says its infrastructure runs on OVHcloud and Scaleway across several data centers in France. **Pricing:** free for 100 emails a day, with webhooks and 7 days of logs. Individual starts at €10 a month for 20,000 to 50,000 emails. Startup starts at €79 for 100,000 to 200,000, with a dedicated IP available. Scaleup starts at €270 for 500,000 to 1 million and includes a dedicated IP. Extra IPs are €30 a month, and annual billing saves 20%. SMS is sold as credits, from €20. **Strengths** - **Hosted in France on French cloud providers**, a strong answer for French public-sector and regulated buyers. - Email and SMS in one account. - Log retention grows with the plan: 30 days on Individual, 60 on Startup, 90 on Scaleup. - API and SMTP on every paid plan. **Weaknesses** - Focused on transactional email and SMS; no marketing campaigns or automations. - Its documentation and community are smaller than the bigger names'. - Hosted-only. **Best for:** French and EU teams that want transactional email and SMS from one French provider. --- ## 3. MailPace: best privacy-first transactional [MailPace](https://mailpace.com/) is made in the UK and, in its own words, "100% European Union hosted". Its stance is the most opinionated here: **"We never track email opens or clicks."** Instead of tracking pixels, it only reports whether the receiving server accepted the message. **Pricing:** from $10 a month for the first 10,000 emails, scaling with a volume slider. Every feature is on every plan. There's an unadvertised free plan of up to 100 emails a month; you request it from support. **Strengths** - **No tracking pixels at all.** If your privacy policy or works council objects to open tracking, this removes the question. - Inbound email turned into JSON webhooks. - Idempotent requests and a simple HTTP API or SMTP. - SDKs for Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Go, Rust and Erlang. **Weaknesses** - **Transactional only.** MailPace prohibits marketing and newsletters. - Shared IPs only; no dedicated or static IPs. - At most 50 recipients per send. - No open or click data, which some product teams do want. **Best for:** privacy-focused products that send only transactional mail. --- ## 4. Reloop: open source, hosted on Hetzner or self-hosted [Reloop](/self-host) is open-source email infrastructure under Apache 2.0: a transactional API, SMTP relay, inbound mailboxes, contacts, campaigns, automations and webhooks. You can use it hosted, or run the same code on your own server. **Where Reloop Cloud is hosted:** on [Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/), a German hosting company, across multiple regions including its EU data centers. The infrastructure provider is European, which also helps if your review asks about US jurisdiction over the hosting. We also publish: - A [Data Processing Addendum](/dpa) that relies on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (including the UK Addendum) for any transfer outside the EEA. - A [sub-processor list](/dpa/subprocessors). Reloop Cloud runs on infrastructure Reloop Labs operates itself, so the systems that touch customer data (PostgreSQL, Redis, NATS, MinIO, ClickHouse, KumoMTA, Rspamd and so on) are our own deployments, not third-party SaaS. If you want every byte on servers you control, **self-host** instead: ```bash curl -fsSL https://reloop.sh/install.sh | sudo bash ``` Run that on an EU VPS (Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway or your own hardware). Point attachments and template images at EU object storage, such as Hetzner Object Storage or a MinIO box you run. Then you decide where everything lives, and no third party processes your mail. Your application code doesn't change. Point the SDK at your own server: ```typescript const reloop = new Reloop({ apiKey: process.env.RELOOP_API_KEY!, baseUrl: "https://mail.example.eu", }); ``` **Pricing:** Reloop Cloud is Free (3,000 a month), Pro $10 for 50,000, and Growth $20 for 100,000 with a dedicated IP, the lowest of any provider here at those volumes. Self-hosting is free; you pay for the server. The [VPS guide](/docs/self-host/vps) lists a minimum of 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM. **Strengths** - **Hosted on European infrastructure** (Hetzner), or on your own server if you self-host. - Cheapest hosted option here: $10 for 50k and $20 for 100k with a dedicated IP. - Full platform: transactional, campaigns, event automations and inbound mailboxes with API, MCP and IMAP access. - No per-email fee when self-hosted. - Open source, so security reviewers can read the code that handles your users' mail. **Weaknesses** - If your policy requires the provider company itself to be registered in the EU (not just EU hosting), check that in each provider's DPA. Lettermint and Sweego state it on their sites. - Self-hosting means you own IP reputation, warm-up, backups and uptime. **Best for:** EU teams that want the lowest price with European hosting, inbound mailboxes for support or AI agents, or the option to move to their own servers later. See [self-hosted email infrastructure](/blog/self-hosted-email-infrastructure) for what running it really involves. --- ## 5. Brevo: best EU-based marketing suite [Brevo](https://www.brevo.com/) (formerly Sendinblue) runs from Paris. Its [data storage page](https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001005510-Data-storage-location) says its servers are in the EU, on OVH in France and Germany and on Google Cloud in Belgium. **Pricing:** free for 300 emails a day. Starter begins at $9 for 5,000 emails, and Standard, which adds automations, starts at $18. Larger volumes are priced on a slider. **Strengths:** email, SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and live chat in one product, with a drag-and-drop editor marketers can use without developers. **Weaknesses:** gets expensive at higher volumes compared with developer-focused APIs, and inbound mail is a webhook, not a mailbox. Part of its hosting is on Google Cloud, a US company, if jurisdiction matters to you. **Best for:** marketing-led teams in the EU. Full comparison: [Reloop vs Brevo](/blog/reloop-vs-brevo). --- ## 6. Mailjet: best established EU-hosted ESP [Mailjet](https://www.mailjet.com/) started in France and is now owned by Sinch (Sweden). Its [security and privacy page](https://www.mailjet.com/security-privacy/) says customer data is stored in Google Cloud data centers in Frankfurt (Germany) and Saint-Ghislain (Belgium). **Pricing:** free for 6,000 emails a month (200 a day). At 50,000 a month it's $40 on Essential or $59 on Premium; 100,000 on Premium is $112. **Strengths:** long track record with GDPR, a strong drag-and-drop editor, and transactional and marketing in one account. **Weaknesses:** automations need Premium, and dedicated IPs are on request at higher volumes. The hosting is EU-located but runs on Google Cloud. **Best for:** teams that want a mature EU-hosted ESP with a good visual editor. Full comparison: [Reloop vs Mailjet](/blog/reloop-vs-mailjet). --- ## How to choose - **"Our security review asks where the data is *and* who can be compelled to hand it over."** Lettermint or Sweego, or self-hosted Reloop on EU hardware you control. - **"We can't use tracking pixels."** MailPace. In Reloop you can switch open and click tracking off per domain. - **"We need marketing campaigns too."** Brevo or Mailjet hosted, Lettermint for broadcasts, or Reloop for campaigns plus automations. - **"We need inbound mail as real mailboxes, for support or AI agents."** Reloop, hosted or self-hosted. - **"We want the lowest cost with EU hosting."** Reloop Cloud at $10 for 50k, on Hetzner, with a DPA. Whichever you choose, ask for three documents before signing: the **DPA**, the **sub-processor list**, and a statement of **where data is stored and backed up**. A provider that can't produce all three quickly is telling you something. --- ## Switching to an EU provider The mechanics are the same for every provider here: 1. **Sign the DPA** and record the provider in your records of processing. 2. **Verify your domain.** Add the new DKIM record, merge the provider's include into your existing SPF record (never publish a second SPF record), and keep DMARC in place. Our [SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide](/blog/spf-dkim-dmarc-setup-guide) covers it. 3. **Export your suppression list** from the old provider and import it, so you don't email people who bounced or unsubscribed. 4. **Swap the client and templates**, then move webhooks to the new event names. 5. **Ramp traffic** over one to two weeks and watch bounce and complaint rates. 6. **Delete data at the old provider** once you're done, and ask for written confirmation. --- ## FAQ Not strictly. GDPR allows transfers outside the EEA with a valid mechanism, such as an adequacy decision or Standard Contractual Clauses with a transfer assessment. Many teams still choose EU hosting because it removes the transfer question and makes security reviews shorter. This isn't legal advice; check with your DPO. Not necessarily. If the provider or its hosting company is a US company, US law such as the CLOUD Act may still reach that data wherever it's stored. If that matters to you, choose an EU-owned provider on EU-owned hosting, or self-host. Yes. Reloop Cloud runs on Hetzner, a German hosting company, across multiple regions including its EU data centers, and comes with a DPA and a public sub-processor list. If you'd rather keep everything on your own hardware, self-host Reloop on an EU server; it's the same open-source code under Apache 2.0. At 50,000 emails a month, Reloop Cloud is $10, while Mailjet Essential is $40 and Lettermint Starter is €40. Self-hosted Reloop has no per-email fee at all, only the server cost. MailPace never tracks them at all. In Reloop, open and click tracking are per-domain settings. They're on for new domains, and you can switch either off in the domain's settings, so no tracking pixel or rewritten links are added. Check each other provider's settings for the equivalent.