Legal
Where your data lives
Where sōtem stores your data and where it runs, part by part. Written from our code and hosting settings.
Last checked: 7 November 2026. This page is in English for now. A translation is coming.
At a glance
In Frankfurt, Germany (EU)
- Database and files
- Website, app and API
- Our operations machine
- AI engine
- Nightly backup
In Switzerland
- Second backup copy
Outside services: region set by the provider
- Background jobs
- Backup email delivery
Part by part
| Part | Where | What happens there |
|---|---|---|
| Database and files | Frankfurt, Germany (AWS eu-central-1) | Supabase runs our database and file storage in Frankfurt. It holds your account and profile, chats, files, voices and their consents, website assistant conversations and connections. |
| Website, app and API | Frankfurt, Germany (Vercel fra1), with a worldwide edge network | Vercel hosts sōtem's website, the app and the API. The API, which reads and writes your data, runs only in Frankfurt. Your browser reaches Vercel at its network point nearest to you, which passes each request on to Frankfurt; the public pages and the app's own files are also cached on that edge network so they load fast. |
| Our operations machine | Frankfurt, Germany (AWS eu-central-1) | A server we run ourselves on Amazon Web Services. It takes incoming mail, sends outgoing mail, runs our own web search and page reader, and holds search memory: a small model on the same server turns text into numbers for search, so that text never goes to an outside AI company. It also makes the nightly backup. |
| AI engine | Frankfurt, Germany (AWS eu-central-1) | sōtem's own AI engine runs on a GPU server we operate in Frankfurt. It starts when it is needed and stops when idle. Today it answers chat only for our own internal space: switching it on for every space is a setting we have not changed yet. Until then, chat in your space is answered by sōtem Direct, our rules engine, which runs inside the API in Frankfurt. Our internal test spaces may also use a hosted test engine; customer spaces can never reach it. No outside AI company receives your chats. The one exception is your own choice: if an owner of your space adds the space's own AI key (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or Mistral), masked chat text goes to that provider under your own agreement with it. |
| Frankfurt, Germany (Amazon SES, eu-central-1) | sōtem's email goes out through our own mail server, which hands each message to Amazon SES in Frankfurt. If our server cannot take a message, Resend delivers it instead (see below). If our server cannot take mail your space sends to its own contacts, it goes out through the Gmail account you connected, if there is one, before Resend. | |
| Nightly backup | Frankfurt, Germany (Amazon S3, eu-central-1) | Every night our operations machine saves a full copy of the database to Amazon S3 in Frankfurt, encrypted, and keeps each copy 30 days. |
| Second backup copy | Switzerland (a Swiss cloud) | A second copy of the same backup is encrypted on our machine before it leaves AWS, then stored in a Swiss cloud and kept 35 days. The Swiss cloud only ever holds the encrypted file and cannot read it without our key. |
| Background jobs | Inngest's cloud; region set by the provider, may be outside the EU | Inngest Cloud starts our scheduled and background work. It receives job payloads, which can include the content of your records. |
| Backup email delivery | Resend's cloud; region set by the provider, may be outside the EU | Resend delivers sōtem's email only when our own mail server cannot take it. It then receives sender and recipient addresses, subject and message. |
Other outside services
Used only for the features named, and only when you use them. What each one receives is on the Subprocessors page.
| Provider | Where | When |
|---|---|---|
| Google Maps Platform (Places API) and OpenStreetMap Nominatim | Google's cloud and the OpenStreetMap Foundation's servers; region set by each provider | Only when you use the Prospecting Agent |
| Brave Search | Brave's cloud; region set by the provider | Only if switched on for your space and only while our own search is not available |
| Google (Sign in with Google, Gmail, Google Calendar) | Google's cloud; region set by the provider | Only if you sign in with Google or connect a Google account |
| GitHub (Sign in with GitHub) | GitHub's cloud; region set by the provider | Only if you sign in with GitHub |
| Social platforms you connect (LinkedIn, X, Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Google Business Profile, Pinterest, Telegram, Bluesky, Mastodon, Snapchat) | Each platform's cloud; region set by the provider | Only for a platform you connect yourself; each post is sent only after you confirm that exact post |
| PayPal | PayPal's cloud; region set by the provider | Only when a contributor's requested payout is sent |
| Stripe | Stripe's cloud; region set by the provider | Only when you start a trial or buy a plan |