Tilaa

What Is Tilaa?

The European cloud hosting market sits at an awkward intersection. On one side, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer global infrastructure but subject European customers to US cloud law jurisdiction, complex data processing agreements, and pricing denominated in USD with variable currency exposure. On the other side, pure-play European providers — Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway, IONOS — offer EU data residency but operate at different scales, with different compliance credentials and different feature sets.

Tilaa occupies a specific position within that European landscape: a Dutch IaaS provider focused on VPS hosting, operating exclusively in the Netherlands, with ISO 27001-certified infrastructure powered entirely by renewable energy. Founded in 2012 in 's-Hertogenbosch, Tilaa B.V. has spent fourteen years building straightforward cloud VPS hosting for European SMEs and developers who need genuine EU data residency and documented compliance credentials without the complexity of enterprise cloud platforms.

The product is unambiguous about what it is and what it is not. Tilaa offers cloud VPS instances on NVMe storage with hourly billing. It does not offer managed Kubernetes, managed databases, global CDN, or object storage. For teams building applications that need those managed services, Tilaa will require supplementary providers. For teams that want a fast, clean, EU-sovereign VPS with green energy and ISO 27001 documentation — and nothing more complicated than that — Tilaa is a strong candidate.

Key Features

NVMe Storage Across All Plans

Most budget VPS providers use SATA SSD storage, which delivers adequate sequential read speeds but suffers under concurrent I/O — the typical production workload for a busy web application or database. Tilaa standardised on NVMe storage across its entire VPS range, providing significantly lower latency and higher IOPS than SATA-based alternatives at comparable price points.

The practical difference appears under load. A PostgreSQL instance on a 2 GB VPS handling concurrent write operations benefits measurably from NVMe — random read/write speeds four to five times higher than SATA SSD mean the database is rarely the bottleneck. For developers migrating from shared hosting or SATA-based VPS, the I/O improvement is often the most immediate observable change.

Hourly Billing With Monthly Cap

Tilaa bills by the hour with a monthly maximum cap — you pay for actual hours used, never more than the monthly price. This makes Tilaa viable for burst workloads: spin up additional instances for a deployment window or load test, run them for six hours, pay for six hours. The VPS S tier at EUR 4/month breaks down to roughly EUR 0.005 per hour.

For staging environments, this billing model eliminates the waste of paying a full month for a server that runs three days. Development teams typically maintain a production VPS on monthly billing and use hourly billing for ephemeral staging, test, and CI environments. Tilaa's model accommodates both patterns on the same account without plan switching.

ISO 27001 Certification

ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security management systems — it covers how an organisation identifies, assesses, and treats security risks across its infrastructure, processes, and people. Tilaa's certification covers its full infrastructure stack, including the data centres hosting customer VPS instances.

For European businesses dealing with B2B procurement, insurance requirements, or regulatory audits, ISO 27001 certification from the infrastructure provider simplifies the due diligence process. Compliance teams can point to a third-party certified standard rather than conducting a bespoke assessment. Tilaa can provide certification documentation on request.

NEN 7510 compliance — the Dutch standard for information security in healthcare — is available for organisations requiring healthcare-grade data handling, making Tilaa viable for Dutch healthcare software providers who need certified hosting infrastructure.

100% Green Energy

Tilaa's data centres run on renewable energy, verified through Dutch energy suppliers and supported with sustainability documentation. For organisations with ESG reporting requirements or sustainability commitments, this matters: the carbon footprint of cloud infrastructure is a measurable and reportable metric, and switching to a provider with verified green hosting reduces Scope 3 emissions attributable to cloud services.

Large European providers like OVHcloud and Hetzner have renewable energy programmes, but verification at the data centre level varies. Tilaa's smaller scale and single-region focus means the renewable energy commitment applies to all customer workloads without exception.

Netherlands-Only Data Centres

Every Tilaa VPS runs in the Netherlands. This is a deliberate product decision, not a capability limitation — Tilaa has chosen depth in one jurisdiction over shallow global expansion. For EU-regulated businesses, Netherlands-only hosting provides a simple, auditable answer to the data localisation question: data never leaves Dutch territory, meaning it stays in EU jurisdiction with no cross-border transfer risk.

This matters in contexts where GDPR's requirements on international data transfers create compliance work. Organisations that have invested in data transfer impact assessments for US cloud providers can eliminate that ongoing work by choosing infrastructure that never transfers data outside the EU.

Pricing

Tilaa's pricing is transparent and denominated in euros with no currency risk. The VPS S at EUR 4/month (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB NVMe) competes directly with Hetzner's CX22 at EUR 3.29/month. The performance difference between Hetzner's and Tilaa's entry tier is marginal; Tilaa's advantage is ISO 27001 certification and the formal compliance documentation that comes with it.

The VPS M at EUR 8/month (2 vCPUs, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe) covers the majority of production web application deployments — a Laravel or Django application with moderate traffic runs comfortably at this tier. The VPS L at EUR 16/month (4 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM) handles higher-traffic applications or database workloads that benefit from additional RAM.

Compared to DigitalOcean's Basic Droplets, Tilaa's pricing is slightly lower for equivalent specifications, and all bandwidth is included in the monthly transfer allowance — Tilaa does not charge overages for the first 1-8 TB depending on plan tier. This aligns with European hosting norms, where bandwidth is typically included, unlike some US-centric providers.

Custom pricing for dedicated servers and private networking configurations is available through direct contact with the Tilaa team.

EU Compliance and Privacy

Tilaa's compliance story is one of the clearest in the European VPS market. Tilaa B.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands. All infrastructure is in the Netherlands. ISO 27001 certification covers the full stack. The Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) is the relevant supervisory authority for customer data processed through Tilaa's infrastructure.

There is no US parent company, no cross-Atlantic data flow, and no exposure to the US CLOUD Act for data stored on Tilaa's infrastructure. When a US court orders a technology company to produce data, that order typically applies to US companies and their subsidiaries. Tilaa, as an independent Dutch company, falls outside that jurisdiction for data it holds about European customers.

The GDPR Data Processing Agreement available from Tilaa documents the specifics: Tilaa's role as data processor, customer responsibilities as data controller, sub-processor relationships, and breach notification procedures. For regulated industries, this documentation is often a precondition for infrastructure vendor approval.

Who It's Best For

Dutch and EU healthcare software providers who need NEN 7510-compliant hosting infrastructure for applications handling patient data. Tilaa's certification and single-jurisdiction data centre model provide the necessary documented compliance foundation.

EU B2B SaaS companies where enterprise customer procurement requires ISO 27001-certified infrastructure and EU data residency guarantees. Having a Tilaa hosting contract simplifies the standard security questionnaire process — ISO 27001 and Netherlands data residency answer the two most common infrastructure questions.

Development teams running multiple environments who benefit from hourly billing for staging and test instances. A team running a production VPS on monthly billing and spinning up ephemeral test instances for 6-8 hours per deploy cycle pays only for actual compute consumed.

Organisations with ESG reporting requirements tracking cloud infrastructure carbon footprint as part of Scope 3 emissions reporting. Tilaa's 100% renewable energy commitment provides verifiable documentation for sustainability disclosures.

Tilaa is a weaker fit for teams needing multi-region deployment, managed services (Kubernetes, databases, object storage), or a polished modern control panel comparable to DigitalOcean's.

The Verdict

Tilaa's value proposition is coherent and specific: EU data residency, ISO 27001 certification, NVMe storage, and green energy in a single Dutch VPS provider, at pricing that competes with Hetzner and OVHcloud. The single-region limitation and absence of managed services are real constraints — teams building globally distributed applications or wanting managed Kubernetes will need to look elsewhere. For European regulated workloads where documented compliance matters and keeping infrastructure in the Netherlands is a requirement, Tilaa is a solid choice from a fourteen-year-old bootstrapped company with no investor pressure to cut corners on certification.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tilaa GDPR compliant?

Yes. Tilaa B.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands and registered with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens). All data centres are in the Netherlands — EU jurisdiction. Tilaa provides a GDPR Data Processing Agreement covering processing roles, sub-processors, and breach notification. No data is transferred outside the EU.

Where are Tilaa's servers located?

All Tilaa infrastructure is in the Netherlands. The company does not operate data centres in other countries. This means all customer data remains within EU jurisdiction without exception — there are no geographic configuration options and no risk of workload migration to non-EU locations.

How does Tilaa compare to DigitalOcean?

Tilaa's strengths: Netherlands-only EU data centres, ISO 27001 certification, 100% green energy, and pricing in euros with no currency risk. DigitalOcean's strengths: 15+ global regions, managed Kubernetes (DOKS), managed PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, a polished control panel, and a much larger community and documentation ecosystem. Choose Tilaa for EU-regulated workloads; choose DigitalOcean when you need global reach or managed services.

Does Tilaa use renewable energy?

Yes. Tilaa's Dutch data centres run on 100% renewable energy. The company provides sustainability documentation and positions green hosting as a core product value. This is relevant for organisations tracking Scope 3 cloud infrastructure emissions under ESG reporting frameworks.

Does Tilaa offer managed services or just bare VPS?

Tilaa is an unmanaged IaaS provider. VPS instances require self-management of the operating system, application stack, databases, and security updates. There are no managed Kubernetes, managed database, or managed load balancer products. Teams needing application-layer management should use third-party tools (Ploi, ServerPilot, Forge) or handle operations themselves.