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Comment by LucaSiviero | Hacker News Reader

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products?

Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get close to these products / companies and what they offer? Managed environments, automatic scaling, serverless architectures that just work and cover all your needs?

I'm a big fan of Hetzner, which has great prices, a great managed environment and lot of features that give you a reliable structure to work on, but I don't actually want to manage everything by myself.

I also use Bunny.net for my products, but the services are still limited and contained to very specific stuff.

Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe?

I believe that the problem is mainly structural and cultural. When a new technology comes out, it's usually from US researchers and companies. So how does Europe even stand a (real) chance at giving the world (or the continent) the best packaged services?

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Funilly enough, payment might be the area where it's the easiest to find a credible european alternative. Adyen is an enormous PSP Mollie is aiming at smaller companies.

Scaleway, OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak and others do have pre-packaged, managed services, but you might not find "eveything and anything" that you find at, say, AWS. The other side of the same coin is that you're as vendor-locked if you buid something with one component at SCW, one at Hetzner and the third at Infomaniak... (but you have to manage 3 different invoices...)

The UK Government just replaced Stripe with Ayden for most payments, so good suggestion.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/02/building-for-the-future-m...

There was a thread about it, and Ayden will not talk to you if you sell less than $5mm/yr using online payments.

This could be Adyen's opportunity for a growth spike if they seize it

I think this is exactly the market Mollie is tapping in at the moment: "as feature complete as Ayden, but no need to run millions by us to be a first class citizen"

I've never been so confused implementing something. I sat there thinking, this is it? There is nothing else to do? How can this be it?

It does have all the features and API craziness other processors offer but you don't have to use any of it.

Unfortunately service reliability of Scaleway was terrible last time we used them.

> is there a real alternative that covers what they do?

Have you tried searching the internet for things like "European Stripe alternatives" and things like that? Or you tend to rely on word of mouth and similar?

I won't claim there are 100% replacements available for everything, but for all the basic functionality of Stripe, Cloudflare, AWS and so on there are tons of options out there, seemingly growing every month, but it does require you to proactively go out and look for them, rather than relying on that you've heard about it since before.

It's not that they cannot be found.

But are they as good and is one willing to take the risk of putting your business one a smaller company vs one of the big ones?

You're not choosing between "Hans with a server in his closest in Germany" and Stripe here, you're choosing between two almost equally established companies that just happen to have different geographic locations and different names. Companies like Adyen are even older than Stripe by some years, and there are tons of examples like this.

That's why I meet with them. I have the mobile number of the ceo of Mollie and can call him in the weekend; compared to the US, we are DEFINITELY not big. But haven't had issues since using them since 2006.

I get your point, and even in Italy we have Banca Sella (first one that comes to mind) which is a great way to collect payments with a local processor. But it's not Stripe...

Stripe is not just an integration for Link or Card payments, and payment fees are actually not that bad. Developer experience matters most to me. Plus, I agree there are alternatives to a basic Stripe implementation, but what about Stripe Connect?

Right, because you're looking for a Stripe alternative, none of them will be.

Did you actually try searching what I told you you could use as a search term? Have you looked into Mollie, Adyen, Klarna, Mangopay, Quickpay, etc? The list is quite large, there are options available but again, it requires you to proactively review and compare them, not just throw your hands in the air proclaiming "It's not Stripe".

Do you know of any EU payment processor that supports recurring payments like a SaaS would need (subscriptions, subscription state tracking, automatic retries of failed payments)?

I looked but couldn't find any. Adyen does not do this on its own AFAICT, only with 3rd party addons that implement recurring payments on top of it. Mollie claims it does this but is woefully incomplete (no failed payment retries for example), and appears to be all in on slop.

Fake news?

> Mollie will retry the failed payment up to 5 times.

https://docs.mollie.com/docs/recurring-payments

I keep being told Stripe supports 3D Secure (or whatever the marketing name for it is this week) too :)

They may but it's not out there in the wild.

Oh, interesting, I stand corrected!

I was investigating this 5 months ago and the answer their slop machine gave was:

> Does Mollie retry failed payments (dunning) and track subscription states? Mollie does not currently provide automatic dunning or retry logic for failed subscription payments. Subscription states like active or past due are tracked, but you need to implement retry and notification logic in your system. This is a common feature request and may be on the roadmap, but no official release date is available.

From your link, note though:

> If your subscription payment does not succeed, Mollie may attempt it again up to 5 times (once a day), depending on the failure reason. After all retries have been exhausted, the subscription will be cancelled.

If there's a payment issue, I would not consider cancelling the subscription 5 days after the first failure as reasonable. I would expect the subscription to go into "past due" state, and to keep retrying.

Can't help you as I've not used it. If it's a new feature feedback might accomplish something.

Seems you need to use multiple providers and route payments depending on card type if you want lowest rates. For example, mollie is 2.5% for Amex but Stripe is 1.5% for Amex but or others it swings other way.

> Mollie for UK

- 1.2% + 20p for standard cards

- 2.90% + £0.20 for corporate and European

- 2.50% + £0.20 for Amex

- 3.25% + £0.20 for international

> Stripe for UK

- 1.5% + £0.20 for standards cards inc Amex

- 1.9% + £0.20 for corporate uk cards

- 2.5% + £0.20 for international within Europe

- 3.25% + £0.20 for International + 2% if fx conversion

[0]https://www.mollie.com/gb/pricing#psp-block

[1]https://stripe.com/gb/pricing. (scroll down for list)

Almost only Americans use Amex though, unless you exclusively target the US market, you can skip it and basically not miss out on a single customer.

In UK Amex are relatively big.

They do cards with airlines where the customer can earn free flights and other such reward schemes to attract customers.

Interesting, has that changed lately? I remember sitting in a pub talking with a bunch of software engineers living and working in London, maybe 15 years ago, and we were joking about how weird it was that the American tourist tried to pay with American Express, and neither of us had seen an actual American Express card in person before that. Maybe is different nowadays, or maybe we were just in a tiny pub?

Interesting things. What is your opinion on Helcim (though it seems to be US/Canadian?) but your comment made me do a bit of digging because I think that I know fairly well about the server side of things but I still somewhat believed that stripe was the cheapest options in general. Thanks for making me get into this rabbit hole I suppose, I do like these rabbit holes though :-D

So do you have more information about normal payment processors in general which are more competitive than Stripe. The comment below by @khurs for example shows that Stripe is actually a bit cheaper than Mollie for Amex cards (which you respond with the point that most European demographic doesn't use Amex cards etc.)

but I am non-european, non-US so I have no skin in the game and I wish to support those which are mutually beneficial to me in terms of providing me a very decent deal and hopefully good support as well. So what do you suggest me some more resources about and would there be anything better than Stripe.

I absolutely know that AWS and others are so overpriced that I sometimes even used to wonder why people might buy it if OVH and Hetzner exists (before price increase, perhaps it can still be price competitive sometimes though)

But interestingly, I didn't believe the same for Stripe, so I am re-thinking my belief about Stripe and payment processing in general too (which to be fair, tangentially might also perhaps be the same way some people might feel about AWS). So I'd be curious to learn more! :-D

Edit: just did some more digging and as an Indian, we have UPI payments which there are some providers of but there is an option iirc for us to directly have a bank account and do a lot of payment processing so much more easier with UPI ourselves and basically pay 0% for Indian specific traffic as India heavily uses UPI (its really good to be honest!) and there are some providers like carefree/razorpay as well which can accept UPI on their side at 1.6-2% if you want API and are just starting out

But I am curious about accepting European/American/Canadian cards though. It seems that carefree/razorpay are recommended if targetting Indian markets and Helcim for American/canadian and Adyen/Mollie are recommended for European centric markets. So I'd be curious to hear your opinions about it.

I'm italian too.

For payments I've used Mollie, which is EU based and has good DX. It also has something critical that Stripe does not: proper customer service. Adyen is also good.

You're a bit generic on other fronts but Scaleway is an excellent EU-based cloud provider. Haven't missed anything from AWS so far.

> Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe?

Why would you even want such a product? Managed postgres for cheap in the low 10s of Euros will scale to lots of users.

If your problem is scaling you have the best problem in the world, and one that most cloud vendors offer solutions for out of the box.

Neon is a great solution..which fits a handful of use cases.

US definitely enjoys an apex position in cloud services, but there's little to no core irreplaceable products beyond leading edge AI in European offerings.

Cloudflare might be an exception if latency, ddos protection and global reach are important.

Most of the 13 root dns servers are American. They're distributed geographically but still owned by American entities

Adding for somewhat completeness sake those are 13 anycast IP addresses with upwards of 2000 servers responding to them. The US has about 500 to 700 of those servers. The EU about 600 servers and the rest of the world 600 to 900 but I do not have exact numbers. One of the root DNS server admins would have to chime in for more accurate numbers. I am fairly certain that the EU servers belong to companies in the EU not that it entirely relates to the overall management hierarchy but I don't know their management structure.

Africa and the middle east have the least, something like ~100 or so.

Some DNS servers can cache their zone information [1].

[1] - https://www.internic.net/domain/root.zone

The anycast is for the /24 those IP addresses share (first.three.octects.0/24) But if you look those /24 are Arin.

Dig +trace shows the recursive lookup (forwarders) used for your NS.

They almost always end up Arin and arpa. I've troubleshot some connection issues between different data centers and transit providers and found root hint oddities I just escalate to my supervisor

That part makes sense to me. If one has ever tried to announce an ARIN IP in the EU or a RIPE IP in the US they will send warnings that the allocations will be pulled back if that is not fixed. Been there, done that. The root servers were created in the US. To have RIPE IP addresses I would imagine would require ARIN to set up some partnership but there again that gets into management and politics in their organization that I am unaware of. Every time I start to read any of their minutes they lose me after the first paragraph.

If the concern is that the US would somehow break the root servers and disrupt many trillions of dollars of trade I guess that is technically possible but probably unlikely given the amount of trade, tariffs, tax revenue that would impact would end anyone's political career and things would be reverted quickly in my opinion.

> If one has ever tried to announce an ARIN IP in the EU or a RIPE IP in the US they will send warnings that the allocations will be pulled back if that is not fixed.

Who are "they" in this case?

ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, AFRINIC, LACNIC. If you have announced addresses from one in the others region and have not received warnings it's just a matter of time. ARIN is the most vigilant. There was a time they used to do ping sweeps and nag people about not utilizing their addresses which led to my putting a 1U server on a /17, /19 and some smaller networks with Labrea responding to pings for all of it. They stopped doing that which led to people hoarding IPv4 space and now putting a monetary value on it which is dumb dumb dumb.

Surely that not the case. Check any public BGP looking glass: Arelion/Telia uses RIPE space in the USA, Lumen/Level uses APNIC space in Europe and so on.

ARIN are the most aggressive about it. Maybe others just don't care any more. They certainly used to. I would never hear the end of it. Perhaps others pushed back enough to stop that practice elsewhere.

There are plenty of alternatives to Stripe. Just search for card processors. If you’re a high-risk merchant, or your product falls into a high-risk category, Stripe will probably reject you. That’s why there’s a big market for other processors to step in.

Adyen is a big payment processor from the Netherlands which many EU retailers already use. Even with some worldwide customers.

UK government too

Asking for a complete replacement is how people get locked in. The way governments end up with m365 by putting out an RFP with the exact feature list of m365. Of course then you limit yourself to only one option.

I think this will start moving a lot now that people are really aware of American dependency and also ethically are opposed to it.

It's not about complete replacement. People don't buy a Golf because they googled "Toyota European version" and decided the limitations are acceptable, or because it has all the same buttons as a Hyundai. They do it because Volkswagen and a number of other European manufacturers make genuinely good, competitive cars.

For cyber security examples there are real movement in europe - ciphercue is trying to create a directory of alternatives which is gaining traction - https://ciphercue.com/directory/eu

Maybe going beyond cyber alternatives is whats needed

OVH is much more developed on the managed side, they even have managed k8s as a service.

And you know their infra generally works, you know when it's not on fire.

And when it is, well you are not going to be the only one down.

Stripe is stupidly expensive ; I have Mollie and Ingenico with tailored deals which make Stripe seems like the dumbest thing you can do. I don't know what their defaults are, but I tried to reason with Stripe and they said i'm too small; no problem with these two. And I can drive to their HQ and ask what's up if anything is up, which I would prefer even at higher fees.

Stripe, AWS and many of the "defaults" people use are extremely expensive, but since it's mostly VC-funded startups who foots the bills, no one seem to care. But once you're doing bootstrapped/long-lived stuff, you need to start caring, and once you see the terms and prices of other things, you start to realize how ridiculously over-priced AWS, Stripe, et al actually are.

Neon was actually developed in Europe -- but by Russians, not Europeans. (Source: I interviewed with them around the acquisition.)

What services do you need from Hetzner? It sounds like there's an available business niche here. Serverless?

Out of curiosity. There aren't any payment card processors other than Stripe? I thought I saw bunch of them.

There are a LOT of processors/acquirers, just most don't want to work with small companies and somehow developers are so really not developers that stripe won because 'better api' even though you get overcharged for everything.

Stripe doesn't just process payments. Are there comparable alternatives on the side of Developer Experience and the amount of services that you can build on top of Stripe? I have never found in any other product the level of care for devs and founders that Stripe has. I'm clearly not talking about "pay by card" and basic payment processor interactions.

There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market?

After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for European base and EU is trying hard to clean up the field with things like EU-inc, digital Euro, common markets etc but its not happening fast enough to make a difference today.

Maybe if all goes well and Trump can finish his term or even invades Greenland then EU can have its "tech", but for now its happening slowly because its primarily driven by the hypothetical risks that are convincingly real but but costly to act on.

> USA is/was easier to start business and get funding

I think this would highly depend on the country. With a solid business plan, I could easily get funding via banks and literally start a company with the press of a button in web portal, in Sweden. Similarly, Estonia seems to have made it ridiculously easy as well. In Spain it's slightly harder, I have to fill out some forms, but with stable income, very easy to get a bank loan even for business ideas that probably shouldn't.

Sure, you won't attract multi-trillion VCs that route, but is that exclusively what you're talking about? How much easier can it be to start the company than the press of the button, since you seem sure it's much easier in the US than all the countries in the EU?

Seden is a success story, just as Estonia but instead doing that and god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US and be clear on the situation across all the EU since US is a 3rd party with much clear rights and obligations towards EU. AFAIK that's why the EU wants to have a 28th regime.

So is the US easier than the EU or not? Now you're saying Sweden is a "success story", does that mean it's easier than the US then?

> god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US

What? That doesn't make any sense. If I'm a Swedish resident, and I want to sell to Danes, then in no way is it easier for me to start a US company (?!) then sell to Denmark from outside the EU, than just starting a Swedish company and selling directly to Danes inside of the EU.

This is starting to sound like someone who never done intra-EU B2B or B2C at all. Where are you getting this from?

Sweden is a success story by European standards but meh by US standards.

> If I'm a Swedish resident, and I want to sell to Danes, then in no way is it easier for me to start a US company (?!) then sell to Denmark from outside the EU

Starting a US company from EU costs a few hundred dollars depending on the broker etc. and indeed you may find it much more useful depending on how you do business(who you employ, what you sell and where are your clients). This is because EU single market isn't that single at all, you will need to figure out pensions, social contributions taxes etc across the EU borders for example but if you incorporate in US, life becomes much more easier as there are already many services geared to fascinate the trade between EU and US. So it depends.

Maybe things are easier from Sweden but then why not Europeans start company in Sweden instead of dealing with Germany for example? Do you by chance require residence and have residence-related obligations and costs? Why Sweden isn't Europe's Delaware and EU is trying to create 28th regime and the EU-inc then?

> then why not Europeans start company in Sweden instead of dealing with Germany for example? Do you by chance require residence and have residence-related obligations and costs?

You can open a company in another EU country, but if you don't live there, your domestic tax agency may/will interpret the company to be under their jurisdiction based on your residency. Now you have double the paperwork, and likely a more complex tax situation to deal with.

> Starting a US company from EU costs a few hundred dollars depending on the broker etc

And in Sweden it's free, if that somehow would stop anyone anyways.

> and indeed you may find it much more useful depending on how you do business(who you employ, what you sell and where are your clients

Agreed, if you have US clients, US customers and generally like the vibe of the US, then makes a lot of sense to incorporate in the US. For basically anything else, it doesn't.

> This is because EU single market isn't that single at all, you will need to figure out pensions, social contributions taxes etc across the EU borders for example

You misunderstand what "EU single market" is referring to if you think it's supposed to mean pensions and similar stuff is shared across the entire EU. Of course it isn't, and no one of us who actually live and work here have that fundamental misunderstanding you seem to have.

> example but if you incorporate in US, life becomes much more easier as there are already many services geared to fascinate the trade between EU and US

Your arguments here make zero sense. Say I'm a Swedish resident, open up a company in Sweden and hire a Finn, now I need to ensure this employment is fully legal. Same goes if the company is in the US, and in fact, would add additional things to do, as suddenly it's not only within EU and EEA, but the legal entity is outside.

> but then why not Europeans start company in Sweden instead of dealing with Germany for example?

I don't know why you would? EU and Europe isn't like the US in that it's many states under one country, we're all different countries with our own laws and so on, there is no "EU-law" or whatever, it's just an umbrella for us to unite under. Why on earth would an German start a company in Greece, if there is nothing particular about Greece in their business? The question doesn't even make sense.

> Why Sweden isn't Europe's Delaware and EU is trying to create 28th regime and the EU-inc then?

Ireland and Malta are the "Delaware of Europe" which are popular to incorporate, but generally, I think people prefer to own businesses in countries where they already live, incorporating on the other side of the continent just doesn't make sense.

In Spain, if you fail at the business, do you have to pay back the bank loan?

Not automatically. If the loan is in your name, or you personally guaranteed it, you still have to pay even if the business fails. If it's only in the company's name, usually the company is liable, not you personally. There's also insolvency/"second chance" options, but that’s a legal process, not automatic.

Basically, depends on how you setup the company in regards to liabilities (which I'm guessing is true in the US too), and the exact terms of the loan.

Totally agree. As you said, the gap is significant and closing it requires a lot of effort and investments to cover a risk that could eventually cool down if the general situation stops being this critical.

> a risk that could eventually cool down if the general situation stops being this critical

Exactly, EU must guarantee that there's no going back even if the next US president is likable, cooperative politician and not this thing that Trump is. Otherwise all your investment can perish if switching to MS, Oracle or Palantir or something becomes acceptable again 2-3 years.

A Trump invasion or something just as hard to fix needs to seal the deal.

EU population: 450 million + 70m UK

USA population: 348 million

The problem is that many of europe's top talent moves to USA, and also that American funding for European startups is huge, and many are made to relocate/IPO in USA too.

+ some smaller European countries not in the EU such as Norway.

Companies also move to the US (e.g. Stripe) or are bought big American companies (e.g. Deepmind)

Also, many of the successful European companies are bought up by US companies.

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