Domainfactory and Host Europe servers move to France

The web hosting company Host Europe has already made headlines in recent years in the German hosting market through numerous acquisitions of competitors. Here on Hosttest, we reported on the acquisition of the Bavarian hosting provider Domainfactory in 2013, as well as the takeover of the company Intergenia with its brands Server4you and Plusserver in 2014. Now, Host Europe is once again causing a stir in the industry. The reason for this is the announcement by the parent company Host Europe Group Ltd. to relocate a large part of the hardware from data centres in Germany to France. This hardware is set to be used in the newly established "Datadock" data centre in Strasbourg. The new data centre has been expanded accordingly and, according to the company's statements, will have sufficient capacity by the end of the year. Initially affected by the move are the virtual and dedicated servers of Host Europe customers previously hosted in Cologne. Over the next year, the entire hardware of Domainfactory is also set to be relocated. Only the shared hosting products of Host Europe are to remain in the data centre in Cologne.

Customers have mostly reacted negatively to the news, as evidenced by the lengthy discussion in the Domainfactory Forum. Many customers fear disadvantages due to the data protection regulations in France following the relocation of servers from Germany to France. Issues such as data retention and intelligence agencies accessing data transmission not only concern Germany but are also relevant in France. This makes it even more complex for resellers who rent servers to their own customers to navigate the legal regulations. According to Host Europe Group, German data protection regulations will still apply to the services, but how effectively these will ultimately be implemented on foreign soil remains to be seen.