The short answer
For a small EU team that wants shared, encrypted, GDPR-clean storage without a per-seat tax, beebeeb is the strongest pick: zero-knowledge on every tier, a Dutch operating company, data in Falkenstein, Germany, and flat per-storage pricing (€10.99/mo for 1 TB) instead of per-user. Tresorit and Proton are excellent peers that bill by the head and lead on dedicated admin controls today.
Why does per-seat pricing punish startups?
Most "business" cloud storage prices by user. That model pays the vendor every time you hire, quietly converting headcount into a recurring storage bill for capacity you may not even be using yet. A 6-person team on Tresorit Business Standard at roughly $14.50/user/mo pays around $87/mo for 6 TB pooled. Onboard three contractors and a designer next quarter and you clear $130/mo. Proton's Drive Professional works the same way at about $7.99/user/mo for 1 TB each.
Per-seat is fair when the product is the collaboration layer and every login adds real value. For a team that mostly needs a shared private vault — design files, signed contracts, client deliverables, the material you can't drop on a Google Drive — paying per warm body is a tax on growth.
beebeeb prices the storage, not the people. The Pro plan is €10.99/mo for 1 TB, scaling at +€10.99 per extra TB self-serve; a Teams plan — 5 TB with two seats included — is coming soon for when it's genuinely a shared account, not a per-user bill. Need more room later? It scales to 99 TB self-serve at +€10.99 per extra TB, with a custom quote past that. The honest caveat first, before a buyer hits it: a dedicated multi-seat admin console — per-member roles, SSO, centralized audit logs — is coming soon, not shipped. Today the team model is one shared account with strong sharing primitives. That covers most teams under about fifteen people, and falls short of the granular IT control a 50-seat org will demand at procurement.
What actually decides whether a tool survives a real team?
Four things separate a tool that holds up under an auditor and a budget review from one that looks good in a demo.
- Zero-knowledge, not "encrypted." "Encrypted" is a marketing checkbox; the engineering question is who holds the keys. If the provider can decrypt your files, so can a subpoena served on the provider. beebeeb stretches your password client-side with
Argon2id(256 MiB memory cost) and authenticates overOPAQUE, so the server never sees the password or the derived key; it wraps each per-share key withX25519, encrypts file data withAES-256-GCM, and zeroizes key material from memory after use. The server stores ciphertext it cannot read. - Jurisdiction, not "EU region." A server location is a data center; jurisdiction is which government can compel the operator. beebeeb is operated by Initlabs B.V. in the Netherlands (KvK 95157565), with data in
Falkenstein, Germany— inside the GDPR perimeter and outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. - Sharing that revokes. A link you can't kill is a leak with a delay. beebeeb's encrypted sharing wraps each share with its own key and supports expiry, passphrase protection, and revocation, plus file requests so a client can send you files without an account.
- Claims you can read, not just trust. The product clients and the core crypto library are open source, so the encryption is auditable rather than asserted. The web app and CLI ship today; the mobile and desktop apps are coming soon, and their source is open too. An independent audit is planned and the findings will be published. The server and this marketing site are private, and we say so.
The shortlist for small EU teams
| Tool | Pricing model | Zero-knowledge | Jurisdiction | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| beebeeb | Per storage tier (€10.99/1 TB, scaling to 99 TB self-serve), no seat cap | Yes, every tier | NL company, data in Falkenstein, Germany | Flat pricing plus open-source clients |
| Tresorit | ~$14.50–24/user/mo | Yes | Switzerland / Hungary | Mature admin and compliance certs now |
| Proton | ~$7.99–12.99/user/mo | Yes | Switzerland (relocating, see below) | Teams already living in Proton Mail |
| Managed Nextcloud | ~€5–33/mo hosted, or self-run | Optional (E2EE add-on) | Wherever you host (often Germany) | Full control, you don't mind ops |
Tresorit
The incumbent that earned its reputation. End-to-end encrypted, a mature admin console, the compliance paperwork enterprises ask for, and a genuinely useful permanent free Basic tier (3 GB, zero-knowledge, capped at 2 devices and 500 MB per file). Its 14-day window is a separate trial of the paid tiers, not the free plan. If you need granular admin roles and audit logs today, Tresorit wins. The cost is per-seat pricing and closed-source clients you have to trust rather than read. Where beebeeb differs: a 14-day trial with no device cap, and open-source clients you can read instead of trust.
Proton
On the two things that matter most — the encryption model and open source — Proton is a peer, not a step down. Same zero-knowledge design, audited clients, one login across Mail, Calendar, and Drive. Two honest notes. Drive's personal and family tiers top out around 3 TB per user (business plans scale by adding seats). And Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland, toward Germany and Norway, ahead of a proposed Swiss surveillance law that would force data retention — a sign they take jurisdiction seriously, and a migration still in progress. If your team already lives in Proton, the suite is the easy answer.
Managed or self-hosted Nextcloud
The control option. A German-hosted managed Nextcloud runs roughly €5–33/mo depending on storage, and self-hosting is cheaper still if you have someone to run it. You get total data ownership and a flat bill. The trade-off is real: zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption is an add-on you configure, not a default, and "someone to run it" means patching, backups, and uptime become your team's problem. We break down how zero-knowledge differs from server-side encryption in more depth — that distinction decides whether a Nextcloud setup protects you or just keeps your files in Germany.
Does any of this scale as the team grows?
That's the real test for a startup. A tool that's cheap at 5 people and brutal at 25 is a trap you've already wired your workflows around. Seat-priced tools scale with headcount; the per-storage model scales with what you actually store. For a fast-hiring team, flat-by-storage is usually the cheaper curve — you pay for the 5 TB you use, not the 18 people who can touch it. Where beebeeb is still catching up is the IT-admin surface: SSO, per-member provisioning, and centralized audit logs are on the roadmap, and if those are hard procurement requirements right now, Tresorit or Proton will satisfy them sooner.
The pragmatic move is to start on something zero-knowledge and EU-native, so you're not migrating sensitive data twice. Pick the tool whose pricing model rewards the growth you're planning — not the one that bills you for it.