Data residency refers to the geographic location where customer data is physically stored. For customer portals serving regulated industries or international customers, data residency has become a critical procurement question. Healthcare data may need to stay in the US; EU customer data often needs to stay in the EU under GDPR; financial services may have country-specific requirements.
Most major SaaS portal vendors offer regional hosting options (US, EU, Asia-Pacific) but verify what’s actually configurable: some vendors offer regional primary storage but back up globally, which may not satisfy strict data residency requirements. For high-stakes use cases, ask for written confirmation of data residency from the vendor.