INFOMANIAK · TECH
Infomaniak: Swiss hosting in Geneva, ISO 27001 + 14001, 100% hydro power, CHF pricing
Infomaniak runs its own data centres in Geneva, keeps 100% Swiss hosting under Swiss law, holds ISO 27001 + ISO 14001 certification and invoices in CHF.
Researched & fact-checked by: DuneDive LLC · As of: 2026-05
What is Infomaniak?
Infomaniak Network SA is a Swiss public limited company headquartered in Geneva, founded in 1994, entirely privately held and not publicly traded. As of May 2026 Infomaniak serves around one million customers, mostly from Switzerland, France, Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland. Three own data centres in Geneva and the surrounding area carry the entire operation; a fourth data centre with heat recovery for a residential neighbourhood went into service in Plan-les-Ouates in 2024.
The offering covers the full hosting spectrum. Classic web hosting from CHF 5.75/month (Standard) up to CHF 24.50/month (Premium) including mailboxes and free SSL. Mail hosting separately from CHF 1.50 per mailbox/month with anti-spam, anti-virus, backup and webmail. The public cloud (Manager IaaS) delivers virtual machines from CHF 5.65/month for a 1-vCPU-2-GB VM with 20 GB SSD and is built on OpenStack. There is also object storage (S3-compatible), DNS, domain registrar service, a Kubernetes platform and kSuite as a Swiss alternative to Google Workspace.
In May 2026 Infomaniak announced a public API endpoint for the Swiss language model Apertus. With it, Infomaniak positions itself as the first Swiss hoster to provide inference-as-a-service for a locally trained model inside a Swiss data centre. The endpoint is OpenAI-schema compatible, the contract runs under Swiss law, billing is per token in CHF.
Electricity is 100% from renewable sources, with the lion share from Swiss hydro power. Infomaniak holds B-Corp certification, ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 27001 (information security). That combination is rare in the market and makes Infomaniak attractive for Swiss fiduciary offices and law firms with sustainability reporting.
Why it matters
Three points are decisive for Swiss fiduciary and SME customers: full Swiss data residency under Swiss law, a clear sustainable power profile, and a workable FINMA path for smaller mandates.
Data residency and law: Infomaniak is a Swiss AG headquartered in Geneva, the contracting party is a Swiss legal entity, the data resides physically in Swiss data centres. The matter therefore falls clearly within the scope of the revised Swiss FADP. There is no third-country transfer, no US parent, no CLOUD Act exposure. A mandate under professional secrecy per Art. 321 SCC can be documented without a transfer impact assessment – the compliance file shrinks to the contract PDF and the ISO 27001 certificate.
FADP compliance for fiduciary data is therefore given out of the box. The data processing agreement per Art. 9 nFADP is generated in the customer portal, signed with company details, and filed. For higher sensitivity mandates (administration, notarial) Infomaniak optionally provides customer-managed encryption keys, which further supports the compliance posture.
Sustainability: 100% Swiss hydro power, documented with certificates of origin, plus active heat recovery in Plan-les-Ouates. Anyone who must deliver an ESG report with concrete numbers has a defensible position here. Compared to hyperscalers whose energy mix often relies only on REC certificates, this is a real difference.
Price-wise Infomaniak sits between Hetzner and Swisscom Cloud. A comparable VM is around two to three times more expensive than Hetzner, but three to five times cheaper than Swisscom Cloud at comparable configuration. For a 5-to-15-person fiduciary firm with a Swiss residency requirement, that is the sweet spot.
How it works
Ordering: through the Manager portal at manager.infomaniak.com. Account creation with Swiss VAT logic, payment by credit card, TWINT, bank transfer or PostFinance. VMs are typically provisioned in 60-120 seconds, web hosting immediately. SSH access via public key, root password optional.
Sample prices May 2026: public cloud VM with 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 80 GB SSD costs CHF 22.70/month. An 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD configuration sits at CHF 89/month. Object storage 1 TB costs CHF 9.90/month. Backup storage 100 GB at CHF 4.30/month. Kubernetes service from CHF 95/month for a cluster with three worker nodes. Mail hosting from CHF 1.50/mailbox/month for 2 GB up to CHF 7.90/mailbox/month for 1 TB storage.
Network: every VM gets a public IPv4 and IPv6 address. Egress traffic in the public cloud is included up to 1 TB/month, beyond that CHF 0.02 per GB – clear price tags without the egress shock logic of US hyperscalers. Private networks are available for multi-VM setups, as are load balancers.
Storage: local SSD on every VM, plus separate block storage (CHF 0.04/GB/month) as persistent volume mount, plus object storage (CHF 0.0099/GB/month) as S3-compatible store for backups, logs and static content. Snapshots are created automatically and included in the VM rent.
Contract details: all contracts run under Swiss law, jurisdiction Geneva. The data processing agreement per nFADP Art. 9 is generated in the customer area – enter company details, retrieve the signed PDF. For a Swiss company that is usually sufficient evidence for a cantonal authority review.
Apertus API: the announced endpoint follows the OpenAI chat completions schema and is compatible with tool calling and streaming. Billing per token, prices not finalised as of May 2026. The inference hardware sits in Swiss data centres, the model stays in Switzerland, the call stays under Swiss law.
Migration: a typical migration path from a Swiss hoster or a US cloud bucket to Infomaniak takes 2-5 days depending on complexity. Database dump, rebuild Docker Compose stack on the new VM, switch DNS, move monitoring. Infomaniak offers a free migration service for web hosting customers with up to 5 websites.
Infomaniak setup for fiduciary AI in 5 steps
- 01Create an account at manager.infomaniak.com, register company details with UID number, choose payment method TWINT or bank transfer.
- 02Generate the data processing agreement per nFADP Art. 9 in the Manager portal, file the signed PDF in the compliance folder.
- 03Order a public cloud VM – sizing 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD for CHF 22.70/month as a start, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Debian 12 as image.
- 04Initial hardening: SSH on a non-default port, ufw active, CrowdSec or Fail2ban, automatic security updates, unprivileged sudo user.
- 05Roll out the Docker Compose stack: n8n, Postgres, Qdrant behind Nginx with Lets Encrypt SSL, plus optional Apertus API integration via the Infomaniak endpoint.
When to use Infomaniak
Infomaniak is the right choice when strict Swiss data residency is mandatory and the power mix matters in an ESG report. Concrete cases: fiduciary office with 50 clients and cantonal audit requirements, law firm with professional-secrecy mandates, SME with a Swiss core clientele and reporting obligations.
For mail hosting Infomaniak is also better suited than most EU providers. The anti-spam engine has been stable for years, the webmail interface is available in German, French and Italian, the mailboxes sit in Geneva. Anyone rejecting Microsoft 365 over CLOUD Act has an alternative here without compromise.
For an Apertus API test Infomaniak is the natural first choice in May 2026 because the endpoint operates without a third-country transfer discussion. The compliance file is trivial, the comparison against OpenAI is easy to run, the call remains under Swiss law.
When not to use
Anyone with strict budget discipline and no Swiss residency requirement is better served by Hetzner at factor 2-3 lower cost. An Apertus API can also be self-hosted on a Hetzner GPU server if the compliance question is structured differently.
Anyone needing multi-GPU clusters for training will find no matching offer at Infomaniak in May 2026 – GPU availability is being built out but not yet at the level of OVHcloud or the US GPU clouds. For pure inference on a single card via the Apertus endpoint, Infomaniak fits; for own Llama 3 finetuning, OVHcloud, Scaleway or a US GPU provider is better.
Also unsuited: applications with global latency requirements. Infomaniak has all sites in Geneva; reaching Asia or South America is not optimal. Anyone serving globally combines Infomaniak with a CDN such as Cloudflare or BunnyCDN.
General caveat: Infomaniak is less automation-friendly than AWS or Hetzner. An API exists but is not as broad as a Terraform provider for AWS. For Infrastructure-as-Code teams that is effort; for click-ops workflows it does not matter.
Trade-offs
STRENGTHS
- 100% Swiss data residency under Swiss law, no third-country transfer for standard mandates
- ISO 27001 + ISO 14001 + ISO 50001 + B-Corp, broad compliance basis
- 100% power from Swiss hydro, documented with certificates of origin
- Apertus API endpoint announced May 2026 – inference-as-a-service on Swiss soil
WEAKNESSES
- Factor 2-3 more expensive than Hetzner at comparable configuration
- GPU offering being built out in May 2026, no multi-GPU training possible
- All sites in Geneva, no global load balancing without CDN
- API less broad than AWS/Hetzner, higher Infrastructure-as-Code effort
FAQ
Is Infomaniak FINMA-suitable?
For smaller and medium FINMA-regulated mandates yes, with clear documentation. Infomaniak is ISO 27001 certified, the data sits in Switzerland, the contracting party is a Swiss AG. For highly regulated constellations (bank, insurance with predominantly retail clientele) Swisscom Cloud or Safe Swiss Cloud with explicit FINMA documentation is more appropriate. When in doubt: clarify in advance with the responsible compliance officer.
How does the Apertus API endpoint work?
Announced May 2026, OpenAI chat completions schema, streaming and tool calling supported. Inference hardware sits in Geneva, the default model is Apertus-70B. Billing per token in CHF. The advantage: no third-country transfer discussion, no compliance risk for professional-secrecy data. The drawback: as of May 2026 the model is not at GPT-4o level for coding and mathematics. For fiduciary tasks such as document classification, outgoing email preparation and client FAQ, it fits.
What does a production AI stack cost on Infomaniak?
Public cloud VM with 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD: CHF 89/month. Object storage 200 GB: CHF 2/month. Backup storage 100 GB: CHF 4.30/month. Mail hosting for 10 mailboxes at 50 GB each: CHF 35/month. Together around CHF 130/month for the hosting layer of a 10-person fiduciary firm. Apertus API token costs come on top (variable by volume). In total CHF 150-300/month for a production setup with Swiss residency.
Which ISO certifications does Infomaniak hold?
ISO 27001 (information security management) since 2021, ISO 14001 (environmental management) since 2018, ISO 50001 (energy management) since 2023, plus B-Corp certification. This combination is rare in the Swiss market and a clear compliance signal for clients with ESG reporting obligations. Audit reports are available in the customer area.