Your data on AWS, Google Cloud, or Akamai can be accessed by US authorities — even if stored in Sweden. Learn why local hosting with No-Ack Hosting protects your business, your privacy, and your GDPR compliance.
Big Tech wants you to believe that hosting in their Stockholm data center makes your data safe. It doesn’t. Amazon (AWS), Google Cloud, and Akamai are all US-incorporated companies, which means they are subject to the US CLOUD Act — a federal law that gives American authorities the power to demand access to your data, regardless of where the server is physically located.
If your server runs on AWS in Stockholm, US law enforcement can still force Amazon to hand over your data — without notifying you, without Swedish judicial review, and potentially in direct violation of GDPR.
There is a better alternative: hosting with a Swedish company, on Swedish soil, under Swedish law.
🔒 The Legal Problem — CLOUD Act vs GDPR
The conflict between US and EU law is not theoretical — it’s a live, unresolved legal clash that puts every European customer of American cloud providers at risk.
- US CLOUD Act (2018): US authorities can compel any American company — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Akamai — to hand over customer data, even if it’s stored in the EU. The physical location of the server is irrelevant; what matters is the nationality of the company operating it.
- GDPR Article 48: EU law explicitly states that third-country legal requests (such as a US warrant or subpoena) cannot override European data protection law without a valid international agreement. But US companies are caught in the middle — they either violate the CLOUD Act by refusing US authorities, or violate GDPR by complying.
- Schrems II ruling (2020): The EU Court of Justice declared that the United States does not provide adequate protection for European personal data. The EU-US Privacy Shield agreement was struck down, leaving no valid legal framework for transatlantic data transfers to US-controlled entities.
- Non-disclosure orders: The US government can legally prohibit the cloud provider from informing you that your data has been accessed or handed over. You may never know that your business data, customer records, or communications were compromised.
- NIS2 Directive (2026): Sweden is now implementing the EU’s stricter cybersecurity requirements under NIS2. Using a US-controlled cloud provider is increasingly recognized as a documented compliance risk for organizations handling essential or important services.
- Swedish authorities (eSam) — a collaboration between Swedish government agencies — have concluded that Swedish public sector organizations cannot use US cloud services for processing sensitive personal data.
The bottom line: A Data Processing Agreement (DPA) from AWS or Google does not protect you against the CLOUD Act. US federal law overrides any contract between you and a US provider. The only real protection is choosing a provider that isn’t subject to US jurisdiction in the first place.
💰 Price Comparison — You’re Paying More for Less
You’d think the cloud giants are cheaper. They’re not.
We compared No-Ack Hosting’s VPS plans against equivalent offerings from AWS (Stockholm region), Google Cloud (Stockholm region), and Akamai (Linode). All prices are excluding VAT and current as of March 2026.
~1 GB RAM Tier
| No-Ack Hosting | AWS (Stockholm) | Google Cloud (Stockholm) | Akamai (Linode) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan | KVM VPS 1G | EC2 t3.micro | e2-small* | Nanode 1GB |
| vCPU | 1 dedicated | 2 burstable | 2 shared (¼ core) | 1 shared |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | 2 GB | 1 GB |
| SSD Storage | 15 GB ✅ included | ❌ Extra cost (~$0.08/GB) | ❌ Extra cost (~$0.08/GB) | 25 GB ✅ included |
| Bandwidth | 1 Gbps ✅ included | ❌ Egress: $0.09/GB | ❌ Egress: $0.12/GB | 1 TB ✅ included |
| IPv4 | ✅ Included | ❌ +$3.60/mo extra | ❌ Extra cost | ✅ Included |
| Monthly price | 70 SEK (~$6.40) | ~94 SEK (~$8.50) + storage + traffic | ~141 SEK (~$12.80) + storage + traffic | ~55 SEK (~$5) |
*Google e2-small has 2 GB RAM but shared CPU (¼ physical core) — not comparable to a dedicated core.
~2 GB RAM Tier — The Sweet Spot
| No-Ack Hosting | AWS (Stockholm) | Google Cloud (Stockholm) | Akamai (Linode) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan | KVM VPS 1G Premium | EC2 t3.small | e2-small | Linode 2GB |
| vCPU | 2 dedicated | 2 burstable | 2 shared (¼ core) | 1 shared |
| RAM | 2 GB | 2 GB | 2 GB | 2 GB |
| SSD Storage | 100 GB ✅ | ❌ Extra | ❌ Extra | 50 GB ✅ |
| Bandwidth | 100 Mbps included | ❌ $0.09/GB egress | ❌ $0.12/GB egress | 2 TB included |
| Monthly price | 60 SEK (~$5.50) | ~187 SEK (~$17) + extras | ~141 SEK (~$12.80) + extras | ~132 SEK (~$12) |
| vs No-Ack | Baseline | 3x more expensive ❌ | 2.4x more expensive ❌ | 2.2x more expensive ❌ |
Our KVM VPS 1G Premium is the standout value proposition: 2 dedicated cores, 2 GB RAM, and 100 GB SSD for just 60 SEK/month. AWS charges nearly three times as much for a burstable instance with no storage included. That’s not a marginal difference — it’s a fundamentally different pricing model.
~8 GB RAM Tier — Production Workloads
| No-Ack Hosting | AWS (Stockholm) | Google Cloud (Stockholm) | Akamai (Linode) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan | KVM VPS 8G | EC2 t3.large | e2-standard-2 | Linode 8GB |
| vCPU | 4 dedicated | 2 burstable | 2 dedicated | 4 shared |
| RAM | 8 GB | 8 GB | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| SSD Storage | 80 GB ✅ | ❌ Extra | ❌ Extra | 160 GB ✅ |
| Bandwidth | 1 Gbps included | ❌ $0.09/GB | ❌ $0.12/GB | 5 TB included |
| Monthly price | 300 SEK (~$27) | ~750 SEK (~$68) + extras | ~565 SEK (~$51) + extras | ~528 SEK (~$48) |
| vs No-Ack | Baseline | 2.5x more expensive ❌ | 1.9x more expensive ❌ | 1.8x more expensive ❌ |
At the 8 GB tier, No-Ack offers 4 dedicated cores while AWS only provides 2 burstable cores — meaning your performance can be throttled during peak usage. With No-Ack, you get consistent, dedicated performance at less than half the price.
🧾 The Hidden Costs of Big Cloud
The advertised prices from AWS and Google Cloud are just the beginning. The real cost is buried in a labyrinth of add-ons, usage fees, and fine print that can turn a “cheap” cloud instance into a budget nightmare.
- AWS and Google have NO included storage. Every gigabyte of SSD costs extra — typically around $0.08/GB/month. A modest 100 GB disk adds ~$8/month on top of your compute cost. No-Ack includes storage in every plan.
- Egress fees (data transfer out): AWS charges $0.09/GB for outbound traffic, Google charges $0.12/GB. If your application transfers just 100 GB/month, that’s an extra $9–12 added to your bill — every single month. No-Ack includes bandwidth at no extra cost.
- IPv4 address surcharge: AWS started charging $3.60/month per public IPv4 address in February 2024. If you run multiple instances, this adds up fast. No-Ack includes a public IPv4 and IPv6 address with every VPS — for free.
- Complex, unpredictable billing: AWS bills by the second with dozens of individual line items — compute, storage, I/O operations, data transfer, DNS queries, load balancer hours, and more. One misconfigured resource or forgotten test instance can lead to surprise bills of hundreds or even thousands of dollars. There are entire businesses built around helping companies understand their AWS bills.
- No-Ack: One price, everything included. Storage, bandwidth, IPv4, IPv6 — what you see is what you pay. No surprises, no hidden fees, no billing anxiety.
✅ Why No-Ack Hosting?
- 🇸🇪 Swedish company, Swedish law — your data stays under Swedish and EU jurisdiction, period. No foreign government can bypass your rights.
- 🔐 Not subject to the US CLOUD Act — no foreign authority can compel us to hand over your data. We physically and legally cannot comply with US warrants.
- ✅ Full GDPR compliance — no legal grey zones, no conflicting jurisdictions, no Schrems II risk.
- 💰 Transparent pricing — one price, all inclusive. Storage, bandwidth, IPv4, IPv6 — everything is included.
- ⚡ Up to 3x cheaper than AWS for equivalent VPS specs — and that’s before you add AWS’s hidden costs.
- 🏢 Swedish datacenter in Stockholm — ultra-low latency for Nordic and European users.
- 🛡️ NIS2 ready — no compliance risk from US-controlled infrastructure in your supply chain.
- 💳 Flexible payments — credit card, PayPal, Bankgiro, Bitcoin, and Monero (XMR) for maximum privacy.
- 🎛️ Self-service ordering — instant provisioning at order.noackhosting.se. Your VPS can be live within minutes.
- 📞 24/7 support — real people who understand hosting, not chatbots reading scripts.
📊 Who Should Care?
This isn’t just about ideology — it’s about practical risk management and cost efficiency. If you fall into any of these categories, you should seriously reconsider your cloud provider:
- Swedish businesses handling customer data, health records, financial information, or any GDPR-sensitive material.
- EU companies needing NIS2-compliant infrastructure without US jurisdiction exposure.
- Developers and startups who want predictable, fixed monthly costs without surprise bills, egress fees, or billing complexity.
- Privacy-conscious users who don’t want US intelligence agencies or law enforcement accessing their data through legal backdoors.
- Public sector organizations and municipalities — eSam guidelines explicitly recommend against using US cloud services for sensitive data.
- Anyone tired of paying egress fees to Amazon and Google every time their users download a file or load a webpage.
Don’t Let a Foreign Government Control Your Infrastructure
Your data deserves Swedish law, Swedish soil, and transparent pricing. No-Ack Hosting gives you enterprise-grade VPS performance at a fraction of Big Cloud prices — without the legal risk, without the hidden fees, and without a foreign government having a legal backdoor to your servers.
The choice is clear: pay more for less protection with a US provider, or pay less for more with a Swedish one.
No-Ack Hosting is a Swedish hosting company operating under Swedish law. We are not subject to the US CLOUD Act, FISA, or any other foreign surveillance legislation. All infrastructure is located in Stockholm, Sweden. Prices are excluding VAT. See our VPS plans and colocation services for full details.
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