{"id":582,"date":"2026-07-21T20:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2026-07-21T20:06:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:06:58","slug":"swiss-based-small-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/schweizer-herkunft-kmu\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Swiss origin matters to businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Your website collects data every day. Enquiries, requests for quotes, perhaps job applications. And you probably don\u2019t know which country the data is stored in.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re not alone in this. Most business owners I speak to don\u2019t know. Not because they\u2019re careless, but because nobody ever told them. The website was built back then, it\u2019s up and running, and exactly where it\u2019s hosted was never an issue.<\/p>\n<p>Until someone asks, that is.<\/p>\n<h2>Who is asking, and why?<\/h2>\n<p>In my experience, it\u2019s mainly three types of customer who ask me this question.<\/p>\n<p>Fiduciary firms, because they process their own clients\u2019 payroll data and accounts. Medical practices, because patient data requires a particularly high level of protection. And law firms, because they are bound by professional confidentiality.<\/p>\n<p>For these three, the question of where data is stored is not a matter of curiosity, but part of their duty of care. If their client asks and they simply shrug their shoulders, they\u2019ve got a problem. And so does their web service provider.<\/p>\n<h2>What\u2019s really behind it<\/h2>\n<p>This isn\u2019t about patriotism. It\u2019s about which law applies.<\/p>\n<p>If the data is stored on a server in Switzerland and the provider is a Swiss company, Swiss data protection law applies. One regulatory framework, one point of contact, one place of jurisdiction.<\/p>\n<p>If they are held by a foreign group, further legal systems come into play. This is the case even if the server is technically located in Switzerland. A US company remains subject to US law, regardless of where the hard drive is located.<\/p>\n<p>For an online shop selling trainers, this is rarely a critical issue. For the three mentioned above, it\u2019s the difference between \u00abI can take responsibility for this\u00bb and \u00abI can\u2019t\u00bb.<\/p>\n<h2>The five questions you should ask your web service provider<\/h2>\n<p>Whether you\u2019re with me or somewhere else, send these questions to the person who looks after your website:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where exactly are the servers that host my website located?<\/li>\n<li>Who is the provider behind this, and where are they based?<\/li>\n<li>Where are the backup copies kept, and for how long are they retained?<\/li>\n<li>Which external services are integrated, and where do they process their data?<\/li>\n<li>Who has administrative access, and how is it secured?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you receive a specific reply within a day, you\u2019re in good hands. If the reply is evasive or doesn\u2019t come at all, that tells you something too.<\/p>\n<p>And if you\u2019re reading these questions for the first time and realise you can\u2019t answer a single one of them: that\u2019s normal. It\u2019s just not a situation you should let continue.<\/p>\n<h2>How I handle it<\/h2>\n<p>All the client websites I manage are hosted on a <a href=\"\/en\/services\/hosting-maintenance\/\">managed server at a Swiss provider<\/a>. No middlemen, no routing via foreign data centres.<\/p>\n<p>That wasn\u2019t a marketing decision. It\u2019s simply the option that allows me to answer your question about your data in a single sentence.<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, if you\u2019re processing payments, sending out newsletters or analysing statistics, there\u2019s really no getting round using international providers. It\u2019s exactly the same for me. The difference is that I know where each component is hosted, and I can tell you before you even ask.<\/p>\n<h2>What the labels have to do with it<\/h2>\n<p>As of this month, Swiss Media Design has been awarded two further honours:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>swiss made software<\/strong> for software developed in Switzerland<\/li>\n<li><strong>swiss digital services<\/strong> for digital services with Swiss added value<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The requirements for this include, amongst other things, a Swiss value share of at least 60 per cent of the manufacturing costs, the main manufacturing process taking place in Switzerland, and an entry in the Commercial Register. In the case of a business that I have been running on my own from Buchs for twelve years, this share is well above the minimum.<\/p>\n<p>I deliberately did not take a third label: swiss hosting. Its conditions require all data, including all backups, to be stored with providers that are not subject to any foreign access. My backups run via Microsoft 365 with data stored in Switzerland. This is fine for day-to-day use, but it does not, with absolute certainty, meet this particularly strict requirement.<\/p>\n<p>Wearing a label that I\u2019d have to justify is out of the question for me. I\u2019d rather have two that are right than three with a footnote.<\/p>\n<h2>In conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>A label is a shortcut. It tells you in two seconds that someone has looked into the subject.<\/p>\n<p>The real work takes place beforehand, when choosing the hosting provider, the tools and the partners. A label merely serves to validate these decisions to the outside world.<\/p>\n<p>Send the five questions above to your web service provider. What you get back will tell you more than any logo in the footer. Even more than mine.<\/p>\n<p>And if that answer doesn\u2019t convince you: <a href=\"\/en\/contact\/\">I\u2019ll answer all five for you, each in a single sentence.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, the question of where a website is hosted was something only technical experts would ask about. These days, almost every new client asks me this, often as early as our first meeting.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmediadesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}