contentpass

A simple and fair solution for users and publishers who want to protect their data

contentpass is a startup from Brandenburg, Germany, that offers a privacy solution for websites that bypasses advertising and tracking. The company mainly targets internet users who want to protect their data. Currently, users are confronted with cookie and tracking settings as soon as they arrive on various platforms, followed by many banners and advertising videos. By subscribing to contentpass, tracking is avoided when you browse participating websites, and ads that are often considered annoying are also hidden, meaning you can prevent data from being shared without impacting the website publisher’s turnover. contentpass pays publishers on a pro rata basis for each user’s usage, so that contentpass users do not lose money. As a result, contentpass offers a fair solution for publishers and users who are conscious about online data protection.  
The company was founded in 2016 and is constantly growing. Currently, around 500 websites are included in contentpass’s subscription. In 2023, the number of participating websites doubled, and this trend has continued in 2024. What’s more, contentpass also offers its technology as a Whitelabel product. Several well-known portals, such as t-online.de or thetimes.com, already use contentpass technology for their own subscription systems to disable tracking and advertising.

As a provider of a privacy protection service for data protection-sensitive customers, contentpass had to host its customers’ data not only geographically in Europe, but also with a European provider that guarantees the highest security standards. For customers, this was essential to protecting the integrity of their personal data from external access. The growing start-up looked for a cloud provider that could keep stored data secure, but still be affordable – and contentpass found both with European cloud provider OVHcloud .

Wanted: a European cloud provider capable of handling higher traffic

Initially, the startup relied on a hyper-scalable US-based cloud service. This posed two major problems: with contentpass’s rapid growth, the costs of monitoring traffic steadily increased. It was no longer possible to arrange full monitoring, as this would have doubled cloud costs if they wanted full visibility. With limited control, the company had to fumble around several times, as all traffic was no longer visible.

The second core issue was with contentpass customers’ concerns about data protection. As a provider of a privacy protection service aimed at preventing tracking, contentpass is mainly for users who are very keen to protect their data. While a contentpass subscription allowed them to avoid tracking, contentpass customer data was being stored by an American cloud provider.
While the data was hosted in the US, there was no guarantee that it couldn’t copied and accessed by the US secret services, for example. For contentpass customers, this risk is problematic. For this reason, the company works exclusively with European partners. The search for a European cloud provider was therefore urgent.

“As a provider of privacy services, we protect our customers’ data. This protection starts with where our customer’s data is hosted, which we can only offer with a German or European provider to ensure the highest standards of protection and security.”

Maximilian Haupt, contentpass CTO

Found: powerful cloud services such as Managed Kubernetes, PostgreSQL and Valkey, with multiple security and compliance certifications

With OVHcloud, the startup found a cloud provider that fully guarantees data protection and sovereignty, while also offering good value for money. In this scenario, OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes was particularly interesting to them, as the entire stack could be migrated at a lower cost. What’s more, contentpass could also use PostgreSQL as its database, Valkey as its cache and Object Storage for statistics, and Container Registry for Docker from OVHcloud.

The proximity of OVHcloud solutions to the original open-source project was particularly beneficial, as contentpass was able to carry out the migration without resorting to highly specialised tools. The first step of the migration was to place an IP load balancer upstream. Thanks to the Managed Kubernetes solution, the existing contentpass tools hardly needed to be adapted. This enabled live synchronisation of Valkey, and with a standardised PostgreSQL plugin, data could be migrated easily from the old cloud to the OVHcloud cloud, without any downtime.

“Security and compliance certificates are in high demand in our industry. Large accounts in particular often require SOC1 certification. With OVHcloud, we didn’t have to worry about these certifications.”

Dirk Freytag, CEO of contentpass

In addition to the excellent value for money, the OVHcloud security and compliance certificates along with the OVHcloud Scaleup programme also swayed our decision. As a participant in the programme, contentpass was assigned advisors for both sales and architecture. They supported the migration with valuable advice and technical assistance.

The contentpass cloud infrastructure:

Reduce costs, increase traffic, ensure full data protection

contentpass has since migrated all customer data hosting to the OVHcloud cloud environment, where it uses OVHcloud’s PostgreSQL and Valkey solutions. OVHcloud’s open-source approach has been particularly handy, allowing contentpass to perform the migration without any specialist tools or downtime. The open-source approach has also made it easier to solve problems.

The startup received advice and support from OVHcloud, who remained involved during the migration to find the ideal solution. By switching to OVHcloud, contentpass has also been able to achieve significant cost savings: cloud user fees are now almost halved, with more than twice as much traffic. What’s more, the migration has eliminated customer fears about compliance and contentpass now works exclusively with European partners, and can guarantee the full sovereignty of its customers’ data.

The mission of contentpass – to offer privacy-conscious users transparency in how visitor data is used, and to offer users and publishers a simple and fair alternative – also aligns with OVHcloud’s values. As pioneers in data protection and sovereignty, the two companies complement each other when it comes to data protection-sensitive customers.

“By migrating to OVHcloud, we were able to halve the hosting costs for twice the traffic – and include the data protection we were looking for.”

Maximilian Haupt, contentpass CTO

More information on contentpass can be found at www.contentpass.net/