Hetzner-Hosted Time Tracking: Why Data Location Matters

When you track employee working hours, you are processing personal data. Where that data physically resides determines which laws protect it — and which governments can potentially access it.

The core problem with non-EU hosting:

• Data stored in the US falls under laws like the CLOUD Act, which allows US authorities to request data from US-based cloud providers even if the servers are in Europe
• The Schrems II ruling invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield, making EU-to-US data transfers legally complex
• Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) require a transfer impact assessment — real compliance work that many small and medium businesses skip

By hosting on European infrastructure, you sidestep this entire category of risk. The data stays under EU jurisdiction, full stop.

Hetzner Online GmbH is a German hosting company founded in 1997, operating data centres in Falkenstein (Saxony) and Nuremberg (Bavaria), with additional facilities in Helsinki, Finland.

Key characteristics:

• German-owned and operated — not a subsidiary of a US tech company
• ISO 27001 certified data centres — meeting international information security standards
• Physically secured facilities — 24/7 surveillance, biometric access controls, redundant power and cooling
• No US parent company — Hetzner is not subject to US jurisdiction or the CLOUD Act
• Competitive pricing — enterprise-grade infrastructure at reasonable cost, which is why many European startups and SMBs choose Hetzner

Choosing Hetzner is not just a hosting decision — it is a data sovereignty decision. Your data is processed by a German company, on German soil, under German law.

Data sovereignty means maintaining control over where your data is stored, who can access it, and which legal framework governs it. For EU organisations, this is not abstract — it has direct consequences:

• GDPR compliance is simpler — when data stays in the EU, you do not need cross-border transfer mechanisms
• Data protection officers approve faster — "hosted on Hetzner in Germany" is a straightforward answer to where-is-the-data questions
• Works councils are satisfied — German Betriebsräte often scrutinise the hosting provider when evaluating new employee-facing tools
• Audit readiness — you can point to a specific German data centre rather than explaining a chain of sub-processors across multiple jurisdictions

For organisations subject to sector-specific regulations (finance, healthcare, public sector), EU data residency often simplifies or is even required for regulatory approval.

Teetrack runs entirely on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany. All application data — time entries, project information, team structures, and user accounts — stays within Hetzner's German data centres.

Practical benefits:

• No US data transfers — your employee time data never touches US servers or passes through US-owned cloud infrastructure
• Single jurisdiction — all data processing happens under German and EU law
• Low latency for European users — servers in central Europe mean fast response times across the continent
• Reliable infrastructure — Hetzner's uptime record and redundancy ensure your time tracking is available when you need it

This hosting choice is intentional, not incidental. Teetrack chose Hetzner specifically to offer EU organisations a time tracking tool where data sovereignty is built into the infrastructure, not promised in a policy document.