Until January 2022, all VWO data (both the VWO customers’ and the respective visitors’ on the customer’s website) was stored and processed in the US East data center of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This setup has been completely compliant with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other similar regulations/laws. Presently, it serves over 3000 satisfied customers globally, with more than a thousand in the EU and India.

Witnessing the interest and requests from some customers, VWO has implemented data centres in the following regions so as to ensure that the visitors' data doesn’t leave the respective borders:

• EU data center - Situated in Belgium (europe-west1 of GCP), this data center caters to those who prefer to store and manage their end users’/visitors’ data within the EU.
  
  
• India data center - Situated in Mumbai (asia-south1 of GCP), this data center caters to those who prefer to store and manage their end users’/visitors’ data within India. 
  
  NOTE: The India data center only caters to accounts that are enabled with Data360.

The data of the visitors, as collected by VWO is in accordance with the Data Protection Agreement (DPA) for the entities that choose to configure their accounts with these data centers. But, VWO’s user account data, such as the VWO account information and VWO campaign metadata, will be stored in the US data centre only.

We recommend you go through our Data Protection Addendum, which details the terms and conditions encircling the area of data protection.

Glossary

Eligibility to opt for a non-US data center

Any VWO customer, irrespective of their plan or location, can opt for their data residency in any of these additional data centers. However, we recommend this option for those who are either based in the respective region or handling end users who are majorly from there.

If you are an existing VWO customer, you can avail of these options by speaking to your account manager or by reaching out to support@vwo.com. If you are new to VWO, you will be asked to opt for your data center while signing up for a plan with VWO.

Data relevant to VWO

The entirety of the data gathered by VWO is classified into the following two categories:

• Customer account data - This is VWO customer-specific data through which VWO offers its services. It includes campaign configurations, account configurations, billing configurations and other similar data necessary to run the application.
  
  
• Visitor’s data - This is the data of the visitors (who arrive at the customer’s website) collected as part of the campaigns executed via VWO. 

How does data flow from VWO?

If you choose to use the US data center, your campaign information, account information, and visitor data are stored and processed within the US. But in the case of a non-US data center, it holds the entirety of the visitor data, while only the campaign and the account information reside in the US.

All the same, VWO has designed the processing of information such that the visitor data never gets out of the respective regions. The application servers for the non-US data centers fetch the campaign information and the account information from the US and process them in the respective regions, along with the visitor data residing in them.

The following diagram depicts how the data flow occurs within the data centers:

The following table explains the information residency for the accounts configured with a non-US data center:

Type	Information	US Data Center	Non-US Data Center
Account Information & Campaign Metadata	Account settings and user login details
	Campaign definitions
	Hypotheses and observations
Visitor Data	Session recordings
	Survey data
	Heatmap data
	Test campaign data
	Forms
	Goals and funnels

What changes does an account configured with a non-US data center experience?

The functionality of the VWO application remains server-agnostic.

If your account is configured with a non-US data center, you can observe the following occurrences:

• Any API call from the application that handles visitor data will have an ‘eu01’ URL path prefix in the case of the EU data center (app.vwo.com/eu01) and ‘as01’ in the case of the India data centre (app.vwo.com/as01).
  
  
• All data collection calls from websites, Feature Management and Experimentation (FME) SDKs, and mobile app SDKs will have an ‘eu01’ URL path prefix for the EU data center and ‘as01’ for India.
  
  
• Any API request (that handles visitor data) in the wrong location will be redirected to the correct location. For example, if an account configured with the EU data center attempts to access app.vwo.com, the system will identify the location and redirect the link to app.vwo.com/eu01. In the case of India, it will be redirected to app.vwo.com/as01.
  
  

FAQs

1. Is it possible to migrate the data of the existing clients from the US data center to a non-US data center?
   Yes. But, migrating the data needs to be scheduled, as it may involve some downtime. Reach out to your account manager for details on the same.

2. What are the key things users need to take care of if they opt for a non-US data center? Primarily, the following things should be adhered to for the accounts that have opted for a non-US data center:
   
   
   • In the case of using VWO REST APIs, it is recommended to add the respective path prefix to the URLs. For example, the REST API call to get all the campaigns in an account/sub-account will be in the following format:
     
     
     • For the EU data center:
       https://app.vwo.com/eu01/api/v2/accounts/{account_id}/campaigns
       
       
     • For the India data center:
       https://app.vwo.com/as01/api/v2/accounts/{account_id}/campaigns
       
       
   • For offline conversions, proceeding without the path prefix in the URL will result in the conversion calls getting rejected. This is because the visitor information actually resides in the respective non-US data center for an account configured accordingly. Using a URL without the path prefix will route the call to the US data center, where it will get rejected.