Captive portal & hotspot software
The WiFi login page that works for your business.
A captive portal is the screen a guest sees before they get online. Ours puts your brand on that screen, lets you decide whether access is free or — with an add-on — carries advertising, takes a voucher or is paid for, gives you a guest list you are actually allowed to use, and keeps guests off the network your card terminal is on. Nobody at the venue manages anything.
From £39 per venue per month, no VAT added. It arrives configured — no site survey fee, no installation charge, no engineer to book. Want to charge for access? See vouchers and paid access.
WiFi that works for your business
Guest network
Free WiFi, on us.
Three hours, no questions asked.
Why managed guest WiFi
What a router with the password on the wall actually costs you.
None of this is dramatic and none of it needs a hacker. It is what happens when the guest Wi-Fi is whatever the broadband router was doing on the day the line went in.
The password stops being yours
A password chalked on the board behind the bar gets photographed, forwarded in a group chat and saved on every phone that has ever walked in. It rarely changes, because changing it means telling the whole high street again. Staff who left last year still know it.
The guests and the card machine share one line
On most venue broadband routers there is one network and everything joins it. The card terminal, the office PC, the booking tablet, the camera recorder and a stranger’s phone all sit together, because the router was set up on the day the line went in and nobody has looked at it since.
Nobody can prove what was agreed
No record that a guest was shown your terms. No evidence of consent for the addresses sitting on your mailing list. Nothing to point at when a guest complains to the ICO — and since 5 February 2026 the maximum fine under PECR is £17.5m or 4% of global annual turnover, up from £500,000.
One device takes the whole line
Without a limit per device, one long download or an afternoon of video flattens the connection for the whole room. The venue rings the broadband provider, and the broadband provider tests the line and finds nothing wrong.
Your name is easy to borrow
Anyone can broadcast a network named after your pub from a phone in the corner. A password on a wall gives a guest no way of telling which network is really yours.
What the portal changes
The parts we take off your hands.
A managed portal does not solve everything on that list, and further down we say plainly which parts it does not touch. These are the ones it does.
Guests go on their own network
The guest network is kept separate from the network your business runs on. Your card terminal, your booking system and your back office are not sitting in the same pool as the room. No card data ever touches us.
A record of who agreed to what
Your terms and plain-English consent wording sit on the login step, so every guest actively accepts before going online. The choice is captured at the moment it is made, alongside a session record: device identifier, when the session started and ended, and how much data it used. That is the evidence the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 expect you to be able to produce.
No shared password to leak
There is nothing written on the wall to walk out of the building. Access is granted per session through the login page, on the terms you set, and you change those terms without re-telling every regular. The router itself ships with its own credentials, never a factory default — the standard the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 set for consumer connectable products when its security regime came into force on 29 April 2024.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 (legislation.gov.uk)A limit per guest, set by you
Time and bandwidth limits are set per access tier and enforced on the router in the building, so one laptop cannot swallow the line and a session ends when you say it ends.
UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and PECR
A WiFi login is not marketing consent.
This is the line most guest WiFi gets wrong, and it is the one that costs money. Collecting an address at the login box and adding it to a mailing list is not the same as being allowed to email it. Our Data Collection tier is built around the difference.
Getting online is not saying yes to your newsletter
Under PECR you normally need consent before you send marketing by email or SMS, and consent has to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous — a clear, positive action. A guest tapping through a login page to get online has not done that. Accepting your terms is not consent either. They are two different questions and they need two different boxes.
A separate box, unticked, that nothing depends on
The marketing opt-in sits on its own, below the sign-up fields, and it starts empty. Nobody is refused WiFi for leaving it alone. That is the whole point of "freely given": if access depends on ticking it, it is not consent.
Do not lean on the soft opt-in at a login box
The soft opt-in exists, but it only applies where you took the details directly from the person while selling or negotiating to sell them something, and gave them a chance to refuse at that moment. A guest connecting to free WiFi at the door is not in a sale. Treat it as a weak basis and take a real opt-in instead.
The evidence is kept, with the time it was given
Each record carries what the guest agreed to and when. If somebody ever asks where an address came from — a guest, or the ICO — the answer is in the record rather than in somebody’s memory of a busy Saturday.
Easy to stop, because that is the rule
Consent can be withdrawn at any time and you have to make that easy. Every message you send must also say plainly who it is from and carry a working address to opt out. The list we hand you is built to be used that way.
What this is, and what it is not
This is how we build the login step and what we keep. It is not legal advice, and we are not your data protection adviser. If your marketing is going to lean hard on this list, have your own adviser read your wording before you send the first campaign.
The reason to get this right changed on 5 February 2026, when the maximum fine under PECR rose from £500,000 to £17.5m or 4% of global annual turnover. A list you cannot prove consent for is no longer just an awkward conversation. It is why the opt-in on our login page is separate, unticked, and recorded with the moment it was given.
Getting live
It arrives ready. Plug it in.
The usual UK route to guest WiFi is a survey, a quote, an engineer and a two-to-three-day wait, with a bill before the service starts. There is nothing here to book and nothing to wait for.
It arrives ready
The router is configured for your venue, tested and boxed before it is dispatched, then sent from within the United Kingdom on a UK courier with nothing to pay when it arrives. It goes into a spare port on the broadband router you already have, and your branded login page comes up. Nobody at the venue configures anything.
No survey fee, no install charge
Published UK prices for a WiFi site survey start at £500, and a day on site is quoted at around £1,000. Pub WiFi hardware and installation is published at £500 to £2,500 before any monthly fee begins. We charge nothing for a survey and nothing for installation.
Nothing to rip out
It works alongside the broadband router in the building. You are not replacing a line, changing provider or pulling cable to make this work.
Changes are made for you, usually the same day
New wording on the login page, a different access rule, a fresh batch of vouchers. We make the change from our side, usually the same day you ask for it.
We watch it so you do not have to
The router reports in continuously, so we see a problem in the configuration or the access rules and fix it remotely — usually before anyone behind the bar notices. That is what the monthly fee is buying.
When a big building needs more
A long corridor, a cellar bar or a function room at the far end may want an extra access point. We produce the plan and the kit list, and your own electrician or IT contractor puts it where the plan says. We do not pretend the building does not matter.
Those UK figures are published ones, not our estimates. Genmar IT prices a predictive WiFi site survey “from £500” and an onsite survey “from £1,000” at its standard day rate. Click Telecom publishes pub WiFi hardware and installation at “£500 to £2,500” and a typical installation of two to three days. Genmar IT — WiFi site survey (genmar.co.uk, seen 2026-09-17) · Click Telecom — Pub WiFi (click-telecom.co.uk, seen 2026-09-17)
We run on your existing broadband: all we need is a spare network port, a power socket and a spot with good signal to guests. Broadband and line charges are not included.
Straight answers
What this does not do, said plainly.
You will hear all of this from somebody eventually, so you may as well hear it from us first and decide with the facts in front of you.
The guest network is open on purpose
There is no Wi-Fi password on the guest network. A login page can only appear once a device has joined, and a shared password would put you straight back on the chalkboard. The trade is that traffic between a guest phone and the access point is not encrypted at the Wi-Fi layer, exactly as on any public hotspot. Sites that use HTTPS — banking, email, messaging and very nearly everything else today — stay encrypted end to end between the guest device and the site they are using.
The details a guest gives us travel encrypted
When a guest types their name, email and mobile number into the login page, those details are submitted over an encrypted connection. Your guest list sits behind a login of your own, which is yours to give out and yours to take back.
We do not inspect or filter what guests look at
We log connection metadata: device identifiers, session times and data volumes. We do not inspect the content of guest traffic and we do not sell content filtering by category. Be careful of anyone telling you the Online Safety Act obliges your venue to filter — it regulates online services, not venue WiFi, and filtering at a venue is a duty-of-care expectation rather than a statutory requirement on you. If you want filtering, it is a real decision to make on its own merits, and we would rather you made it with the law stated correctly.
Read the acceptable use policyTreat the guest network as a public space
A guest network is a public space, the same as the WiFi at an airport or a shopping centre. That is why we keep it apart from the network your business runs on, and why nothing belonging to the business should sit on it. Your till, your office PC and your camera recorder belong on your side, not alongside whoever walked in for a coffee.
We cannot stop somebody imitating your name
No venue can prevent a stranger broadcasting a network named after it, and we make no claim to spot one. What a consistent branded login page gives you is regulars who know what your page looks like, so a screen that looks wrong is easier to notice. That is a good habit, not a security control.
We do not publish an uptime promise
We do not offer a service level agreement, so we are not going to print a percentage we have not measured. What we will tell you is what the monthly fee actually covers: the software, the router, the monitoring and the people who make changes for you, Monday to Friday.
Three packages
Start simple. Move up when you want more.
Same portal, same brand on the screen. What changes is how much you learn about the guests using it.
Basic
£39/month
Per venue. No VAT added.
Your branded Wi-Fi front door.
Venues that want guests online in one tap, with their own name on the screen.
Full feature listBasic + Data Collection
£59/month
Per venue. No VAT added.
Know who walked through the door.
Venues that want a guest list they can actually use.
Full feature listBasic + Data + Guest Insights
£89/month
Per venue. No VAT added.
See who came back.
Venues that want to know their busy hours and their repeat custom, not just their guest count.
Full feature list£39, £59 or £89 per venue per month, no VAT added. We run on your existing broadband: all we need is a spare network port, a power socket and a spot with good signal to guests. Broadband and line charges are not included. The router is included on a 12-month plan, or £149 one-off if you would rather stay on rolling monthly. No site survey fee. No installation charge.
Everything the software does
Safety is one reason. It is not the reason you will keep it.
The portal earns its place on a Saturday: your name on the screen, a guest list you can legally market to, and numbers that tell you when your venue is busy.
Branded login page
Your logo, your colours, your wording. Guests land on your name, not a router default page, and you can put the Sunday menu, the bookings link or the Instagram handle on it.
All packages
Free access, with advertising, voucher or paid add-ons
Give access away behind your terms. Add advertising on the page (£19 per venue per month), or vouchers and paid access (quoted per venue), and mix them as the room needs.
All packages, add-ons extra
Time and bandwidth limits
Set how long a guest stays online and how much speed each access tier gets, enforced on the router in the building.
All packages
PECR-compliant consent
A separate, unticked marketing opt-in at the login step, with the evidence stored against the record and the time it was given.
All packages
No guest cap, no overage
A busy August does not produce a bigger invoice. Plenty of UK portals price by guest count and charge again when you pass it. We do not count your guests.
All packages
Guest details captured
Guests enter name, email and mobile number before going online, so you know who came through the door.
From £59
Your guest list, exportable
The list belongs to you. View it and export it whenever you want to run a newsletter or a midweek offer.
From £59
Guest Insights
Connections and visitor counts by day, week and month, your busiest hours, how long guests stay, and new versus returning custom.
From £89
What we handle
You run the venue. We run the WiFi.
The monthly fee covers the software, the router and the people who look after it, so nobody behind the bar ends up owning a network they did not ask for.
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We supply and manage the router
The router is ours to set up, monitor and look after. It arrives configured for your venue and nobody behind the bar has to log into anything, ever.
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Changes happen without a visit
New login-page wording, a different access rule, a fresh batch of vouchers. We make the change from our side, so nothing waits on an engineer’s diary.
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Every venue costs the same
A second or a tenth venue is the same monthly price as the first, with one login covering the group. We do not add a per-site surcharge — CaptiFi publishes +£25 a month per extra site.
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A fixed monthly fee
One price per venue per month, with no VAT added and no usage-based costs. No guest caps and no overage charges.
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Hardware on your terms
The router is included on a 12-month plan, or £149 one-off if you would rather stay on rolling monthly. No site survey fee. No installation charge.
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Support with an early start
Support runs Monday to Friday, 06:00–15:00 GMT (07:00–16:00 BST) — an early-start desk, open before the doors are, which is when a venue actually needs it.
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Simple to leave
On rolling monthly, one calendar month's notice. On a 12-month plan, the balance of the term falls due — unless you took the £149 hardware option, in which case a month's notice is all it is.
CaptiFi — UK pricing, +£25 a month per extra site (captifi.io, seen 2026-11-01)
Want to see the login page on your own phone?
Tell us about your venue and we will show you the guest login flow, then price it. From £39 per venue per month, no VAT added, and nothing to pay for a survey or an install.
Or email sales@hotwireless.co.uk