Your guest WiFi is a marketing channel.
Put it to work.
Every guest who connects becomes a contact you can market to again: a GDPR-compliant email opt-in straight into your mailing list, ready for your next offer, event or quiet-midweek nudge. Branded in your logo and colours, on your own domain, not a vendor’s. Free for the first 12 months with every UniFi install, then £15-25/month. No per-user fees, no third party owning a copy of your audience.
- Live on your domain. Guests sign in at wifi.yourvenue.co.uk, not vendor-name.com. Reads as legitimate, builds your brand instead of theirs.
- GDPR-compliant by design. Clear consent tickbox, linked privacy notice, timestamped consent log. The data is yours; the audit trail is yours.
- Syncs to your mailing list. Brevo, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, MailerLite: new sign-ups land in your existing audience within seconds, tagged automatically.
- Year 1 free with every install. Portal design, setup and 12 months of hosting are all included with the WiFi install. No monthly fee for the first year. From month 13: £25/mo bundled with remote monitoring (recommended), or £15/mo portal-only if you don’t want monitoring.
Yours doesn’t look like everyone else’s.
Most captive portal vendors give you one template, charge you per user, and slap their own brand in the footer. Every Net Intellect portal is designed from your brand outwards: typography, colour, copy tone, layout. The six designs below are illustrative examples of what we’ve produced for different sectors. They are not a menu to pick from. Yours is drawn up around your own brand, your own venue and your own customers.
Pubs & bars
“The Tinker’s Arms”
Heritage feel. Crest mark, brass accent, copy that invites guests to opt in for quiz night and Sunday roast bookings.
Cafés & coffee shops
“Embergrove Coffee”
Warm browns, hand-feel typography, scattered coffee-bean motif, opt-in tied to new bean drops and birthday pastry. Reads like the menu, not a form.
Hotels & B&Bs
“Larkmoor House”
Editorial serif, room-number check-in, return-guest rate hook. The kind of portal that earns its complimentary-WiFi label.
Gyms & studios
“Forgeworks Athletics”
Dark-mode aesthetic, condensed italic display, opt-in for class drops and protein-bar promos. Punchy enough for a 24/7 site.
Salons & spas
“Petal Hollow”
Soft rose, italic serif, treatment-offers hook. Reads like the brochure on the front desk, not a vendor portal.
Bold & technical
“Sage”: terminal aesthetic
Dark mode, code-style typography, status panel that reads like a console output. The aesthetic for venues that want to read as design-conscious or tech-forward.
A reminder: these designs are examples of work, not options on a menu. Your portal is drawn up against your own brand, sector and audience. If you like an element of one of the above, we can borrow it. If you want something completely different, we draw it from scratch. The brief call is where we settle the direction.
Here’s the terminal-style portal we built, running live.
Terminal aesthetic, in production right now
A guest WiFi portal we designed, built, and currently host on Cloudflare Workers for a real venue. Terminal-style aesthetic, the brand’s 5-stop gradient on the title and the CHECK_IN() button, a GDPR-compliant consent tickbox with linked privacy notice, and a deliberate just-connect-skip-email route for guests who’d rather not opt in, because under GDPR you cannot make WiFi access conditional on marketing consent.
The same Cloudflare Worker pattern also runs the live network-status panel you can see on our status page. Same infrastructure, same uptime guarantees, different URL exposure.
What it costs to run: the hosting comfortably handles far more traffic than a small business will ever generate, so running costs stay low and predictable. The value is in the design, the email-sync wiring, and the ongoing support - not the bandwidth.
Free for your first year. Then £15-25/mo.
Captive portal design, setup and the first 12 months of hosting are all included with every Net Intellect UniFi install. No monthly fee for the first year. From month 13, a small monthly fee keeps the lights on. You pick how you want it bundled.
Year 1: free with install
Portal design, custom domain (e.g. wifi.yourvenue.co.uk), HTTPS certificate, GDPR consent log, email-sync wiring AND 12 months of hosting are all included with every UniFi install, at any tier (Essential, Standard or Premium). No monthly fee for the first year. A reminder email goes out at month 11.
Year 2+ with monitoring: £25/mo
Our usual recommendation. From month 13, the Remote Monitoring contract bundles 24/7 network watching, firmware updates during quiet hours, monthly summary email and portal hosting + minor design tweaks into one £25/month fee. Premium-tier installs already include 12 months of this bundled tier rather than the portal-only one.
Year 2+ portal-only: £15/mo
If you don’t want network monitoring (happy to keep an eye on it yourself), portal hosting alone runs at £15/month from month 13. Covers the Cloudflare Worker, the email-sync, and minor design tweaks. No network monitoring or remediation at this tier.
Clean exit if you leave
Cancel either contract any time with 30 days’ notice. After cancellation, the portal stays live for a 90-day grace period. At end of grace, you choose: £150 one-off handover (the Cloudflare Worker code migrates to your own Cloudflare account so you self-host), or sunset on a date you choose. Design files, consent log and captured email list stay yours either way.
Already have UniFi but want our portal on top? The 12-months-free hosting period applies to new Net Intellect UniFi installs only. For clients with existing UniFi networks, we offer a one-off £250 design fee and £15/month hosting from go-live (no monitoring required). Talk to us if that’s you.
Reserved future-cost clause. The hosting comfortably covers the traffic a typical small-business portal generates. We reserve the right to introduce or revise a hosting charge if your portal regularly exceeds approximately 50,000 requests per day, or if our underlying hosting costs otherwise materially increase. Any revised charge will be set out in writing and will take effect no sooner than 60 days after that notice; if you would prefer not to continue on the revised terms, you may cancel before it takes effect at no further cost.
What you pay for a portal, side by side.
Public list prices for the entry tier on each subscription portal vendor, December 2025. Our design and the first 12 months of hosting are bundled into the install (no design fee, no month-1 fee). From month 13, hosting is £15/month portal-only or £25/month bundled with network monitoring. Either way it sits well below subscription-vendor entry tiers, with year one free entirely.
| Net Intellect | Purple WiFi | Stampede | Wireless Social | MyWiFi Networks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-off design / setup fee | Includedpart of UniFi install | £250-500design add-on | £200+design add-on | £300+design add-on | £150+design add-on |
| Year 1 monthly fee | £012 months free with install | ~£29/mofrom day 1 | ~£39/mofrom day 1 | ~£59/mofrom day 1 | ~£19/mofrom day 1 |
| Year 2+ monthly fee | £15-25/mo£15 portal-only · £25 with monitoring | ~£29/moEssential tier | ~£39/moStarter | ~£59/moSMB tier | ~£19/moStarter |
| Per-user fees | None | Tiered by MAU | Tiered by venue | Tiered by sign-ups | Tiered by sign-ups |
| Custom domain (wifi.yourvenue.co.uk) | Included | Higher tier | Higher tier | Included | Higher tier |
| Full design control (not a template) | Yes, fully custom | Template-based | Template-based | Template-based | Template-based |
| GDPR-compliant consent log | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sync into your mailing list (Brevo, Mailchimp, etc.) | Direct, included | Via integration tier | Via integration tier | Via integration tier | Via integration tier |
| Data ownership | 100% yourson your domain, in your ESP | Shared with vendor | Shared with vendor | Shared with vendor | Shared with vendor |
| Designed and supported in the UK | Yes, Worcester | Yes (Manchester) | Yes (Edinburgh) | Yes (London) | Canada-headquartered |
| 5-year cost (setup + monthly) | £720-1,200year 1 free · then 4 yrs × £15 or £25 | £1,990+ | £2,540+ | £3,840+ | £1,290+ |
How to read this: Year 1 is free with any Net Intellect UniFi install; from year 2, the £25/mo bundled tier also includes 24/7 network monitoring, firmware updates and a monthly summary, not just the portal. So even our higher long-term figure delivers more than competitor portals at a lower price, with the first year on us. Subscription vendors’ published December 2025 entry-tier prices are listed; the “+” indicates fees rise once you exceed included volumes or unlock features such as analytics export, API access or multi-venue management.
From brief to live in two weeks.
Most vendors get you live in 24 hours with their generic template. We take a fortnight because we’re actually designing the page from your brand. The trade is that your venue’s portal stops looking like an early-2010s SaaS form and starts looking like the brochure on your counter.
Brief call
A 20-minute call to walk through your brand: logo, colours, typography, tone, and what you want guests to opt in for. Mailing list of choice. Custom domain or wifi.netintellect.co.uk subdomain.
Design proof
You receive a single-page design proof showing the portal mocked up at phone, tablet and laptop sizes. One round of revisions is included; further rounds rarely needed at this scale.
Wire-up & test
We push the live worker to Cloudflare, point the DNS at it, install the HTTPS certificate and connect the email sync. A test sign-up is fired into your audience as confirmation.
Go-live
The portal goes live on your WiFi controller. From the first guest sign-in, opt-ins land in your existing mailing platform within seconds, tagged by venue if you have more than one.
Sectors where a captive portal actually earns its keep.
If your guests stay for more than ninety seconds and you’d like the option of marketing to them legally afterwards, a portal earns its keep. Below: the venues where we’ve seen it deliver fastest.
Pubs & bars
Quiz nights, Sunday-roast bookings, returning regulars. The patron sat in your snug is the marketing list you don’t have yet.
Cafés & coffee shops
Loyalty offers, new-bean drops, birthday pastries. Customers stay longer; the portal makes the second cup possible.
Hotels & B&Bs
Seasonal menus, return-guest rates, restaurant table-bookings. The room is the dwell time. The portal is the relationship.
Salons & spas
Treatment offers, gift-card prompts, the ‘book three, get one’ promo. Sit-in time is portal time.
Gyms & studios
Class-drop alerts, protein partner promos, PT introductions. A members-only network with a portal beats a generic WiFi password every time.
Clinics & surgeries
Health-screening reminders, vaccination windows, repeat-prescription nudges. Patient waiting areas, GDPR done right.
Village halls & venues
Booking forms, community newsletter, fundraising prompts. Charity-compliant by default, with the gift-aid tickbox we can add for you.
Retail & showrooms
Wishlist email capture, sale-day previews, sized-stock alerts. Walk-in becomes follow-up; window-shopping becomes returns.
Coworking & offices
Visitor sign-in & NDA tickbox in one. Replaces the iPad-on-reception kit. Your front-of-house team save 5 minutes a guest.
What the portal earns back, over a typical year.
The honest answer: it depends on your dwell time, your existing email habit, and whether you actually send anything to the list afterwards. The arithmetic is simple though. Here’s a typical small-venue scenario.
- 30 guests/day connect to your WiFi. Realistic for a busy café, mid-sized pub, or 12-room hotel.
- ~25% opt in to marketing. A sensible UK rate, helped by a single, clearly-worded consent tick.
- ~7-8 new email addresses/day. So roughly 225 a month, around 2,700 over the first year.
- One promo a month into that list. On cautious figures: about a 1% email click-through, and one in four of those clicks turning into a real return visit. The same assumptions as the calculator on our homepage.
- By year two, very roughly 5 to 10 extra visits a month. At a £5 average ticket that is around £30 to £50 a month gross. Modest, but it is the same footfall earning a second time, and it compounds as the list grows.
These are deliberately cautious numbers, not a best-case headline. The point isn’t that the portal pays for itself overnight; it’s that guests you have already paid to attract keep earning after they leave, as long as you actually send the list something (the bit nobody enjoys). We can’t do the sending for you (that’s a marketing agency’s job, not a network installer’s), but we’ll wire the list straight into Brevo or Mailchimp so whoever runs your marketing doesn’t inherit a tangle.
Questions we get asked before signing off a portal.
New to all this? Read our plain-English guide to captive portals and what they cost.
What is a captive portal?
It’s the sign-in screen that pops up when a guest joins your guest WiFi. Instead of the network connecting silently, the browser is redirected to a page hosted by you (or, in our case, on your behalf on Cloudflare Workers). The guest sees your branding, optionally enters their email, agrees to your terms, and clicks Connect. At that point, the controller releases them to the internet. The portal is the moment a passing guest becomes a marketable contact, legally and with consent.
How much does a Net Intellect captive portal cost?
Free for the first 12 months with every Net Intellect UniFi install. That includes design, setup, custom domain (e.g. wifi.yourvenue.co.uk), HTTPS certificate, GDPR consent log, email-sync wiring AND 12 months of hosting on Cloudflare Workers. No monthly fee for year one. The cost difference between our three install tiers covers what happens to the captured email data (CSV at Essential, live sync at Standard, multi-event branding at Premium), not the portal itself.
From month 13, ongoing hosting is a small monthly fee in one of two forms:
- £25/month for the Remote Monitoring & Portal contract that bundles 24/7 network monitoring + portal hosting + minor design tweaks. Our usual recommendation. Premium-tier installs include 12 months of this bundled tier in the install price.
- £15/month for portal-only hosting if you don’t want network monitoring. Covers the Cloudflare Worker, the email-sync, and minor design tweaks.
For clients with existing UniFi networks (not installed by us), the 12-months-free period doesn’t apply: there’s a one-off £250 design fee and hosting starts at £15/month from go-live.
Reserved clause: hosting is provided on a best-effort basis at the prices above. We reserve the right to revise the fee if your portal regularly exceeds approximately 50,000 requests per day, or if our hosting costs otherwise materially increase; any change will be set out in writing with at least 60 days’ notice, and you may cancel before it takes effect. We don’t anticipate this under current commercial terms.
Is it GDPR-compliant?
Yes. Every portal includes a clear opt-in tickbox (unticked by default for marketing consent), a linked privacy notice, and a record of consent timestamped with the visitor’s IP address. Critically, the “skip email” route is always available, because under GDPR you cannot make WiFi access conditional on marketing consent. The portal lets guests connect without opting in. Vendors that don’t offer that route are putting the venue in an awkward legal position, and the venue, not the vendor, would catch the ICO complaint.
Will my data be hosted in the UK?
Yes. The captive-portal infrastructure runs from Cloudflare’s London edge for all UK traffic, and the consent log (the legal evidence of opt-in) is held on Cloudflare’s UK infrastructure. The actual mailing list lives wherever your existing email platform runs it: Brevo and MailerLite are EU-hosted, Mailchimp is US-hosted but under SCC clauses, Klaviyo is US-hosted. We can advise on which to pick if you don’t already have one.
Does it work without a Net Intellect WiFi install?
Yes, on any UniFi controller (yours or ours). UniFi is the only platform we work with: it’s the platform we specialise in, and focusing on one ecosystem lets us deliver a properly tested portal rather than a half-supported “works on most controllers” offering. If your existing WiFi is UniFi-based, the portal slots in as an external captive-portal redirect; we don’t need to touch the install. If it’s another vendor (Aruba, Meraki, TP-Link, Ruijie, etc.), the portal won’t install: the right path is to talk about a UniFi refresh first.
How long does Net Intellect host the portal for?
For installs done by Net Intellect: the first 12 months are free, automatically. A reminder email goes out at month 11 with the two ongoing options. From month 13 the portal stays live for as long as you have either an active Remote Monitoring & Portal contract (£25/month, our usual recommendation) or a portal-only hosting contract (£15/month). 30 days’ notice to cancel either; after cancellation, the portal stays live for a 90-day grace period. At end of grace, we either hand over the Cloudflare Worker code (one-off £150 handover so you self-host on your own Cloudflare account) or sunset it on a date you choose. Your artwork, consent log and captured email list stay yours either way. There is no “data hostage” situation. Final terms are written into the proposal you sign before install begins.
Got a question that isn't here? Call us on 07432 214653 and we'll talk it through.
A portal is two weeks away. Let’s book the brief call.
20 minutes on a call to walk through your brand, your mailing platform of choice, and what you want guests to opt in for. Two weeks from there, you’re live on your own domain, with opt-ins landing in your existing list within seconds of sign-up.