When we started building CrossPost, the brief was short: one social media management app for all. One place to plan, publish and measure across every network a small business or creator actually uses. The harder question was how to build it. We decided early that CrossPost would be privacy-first, and that decision shaped almost everything that followed.
The tools we used were quietly selling us
Before CrossPost existed we managed our own channels with the usual suspects. They were expensive, they were cluttered, and the longer we used them the more obvious it became that we were not really the customer. Our audience data fed advertising products. Our content trained recommendation systems. Every connected account was another stream of information flowing out of our business and into somebody else’s database.
For a company based in Switzerland, where people take data protection seriously, that felt wrong. We wanted a tool that treated the connection between a business and its followers as something private. So we built one.
What privacy-first means in practice
Privacy-first is an easy phrase to print on a landing page. For us it comes down to a handful of concrete choices that we revisit with every feature we ship.
- Your channels on your server. Tokens, drafts, media and analytics live in your own workspace. CrossPost is the tool that moves your content to the networks, not a warehouse that keeps a copy for its own purposes.
- Official connections only. Every network is linked through its official API with an OAuth connection you can revoke at any time. No scraping, no shared passwords, no browser extensions that see everything you do.
- No tracking inside the app. We do not run advertising pixels or third-party analytics inside CrossPost. The only numbers we care about are the ones that help you understand your own audience.
- Operated in Switzerland. CrossPost is a service of UHL-Services in Adliswil, which means Swiss data protection law applies and you can reach the people who run the service by phone. The infrastructure itself is hosted in Germany on Hetzner, and on-demand concierge deployments are available in every country where CrossPost has customers, so your data can live in a specific country on request.
Privacy and simplicity turned out to be the same goal
Something we did not expect: designing for privacy made the product simpler. When you are not trying to extract as much data as possible, you stop adding screens that exist only to collect it. The dashboard became calmer. Onboarding shrank to two steps. Scheduling, the feature people use most, got the attention it deserved instead of competing with upsell banners.
Our customers noticed. One selector and vinyl shop owner told us that the comprehensive dashboard let him streamline his strategy across several platforms without feeling watched, and that advanced scheduling gave him back hours every week.
Pricing that does not depend on your data
Because we do not monetise your audience, we have to be honest about money. CrossPost has a free Trial that connects up to two accounts with thirty scheduled posts a month, and a Full version with unlimited accounts, unlimited posts, advanced analytics, automated publishing and priority support. Billing runs through Stripe and you can change or cancel your subscription in the customer portal whenever you like.
Where we go from here
The social media landscape keeps shifting. New networks such as Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon have joined the established platforms, and we add connections as they mature. What will not change is the principle behind CrossPost: your content and your audience belong to you. If that sounds like the way you want to work, start a free trial, or call us on +41 44 500 10 12 and we will walk you through it.