Captive portal pricing compared: per site, per access point and per user models

A captive portal is the login page guests see before they get online. Vendors price it in four ways: per site, per access point, per user or session, or bundled with hardware. Per access point favors venues with few access points, and per site favors venues with many. Compare quotes on three-year total cost, including SMS, support and exit fees.

Which captive portal pricing model should you choose?

Choose the model whose billing metric grows more slowly than your estate. That one test settles most captive portal pricing decisions before you open a rate card.

If your venues are small and your access point (AP) count is low, per AP licensing keeps the bill in line with what you run. If each venue carries dozens of APs, a flat per site fee caps the cost however dense coverage gets. Per user or per session pricing suits low or unpredictable traffic, but every busy weekend raises the invoice. Licenses bundled with hardware look free until you want to change hardware.

The rate matters less than three numbers you already hold: venue count, AP count and monthly logins. Apply those numbers to each quote and project them over three years. Then add the costs that sit outside the headline license. This guide works through that arithmetic for a single cafe, a 40-site retail estate and a 3,000-room hotel group.

How do the four captive portal pricing models differ?

Each model ties your bill to a different number. The table compares them on the factors that move a three-year total.

Model	Bill scales with	Cost predictability	Best fit	Main risk	Hardware dependency	Question to ask the vendor
Per site	Number of venues	High: fixed fee per venue	Large venues with many APs per site	A full site fee for a kiosk with one AP	None, if the platform is hardware-agnostic	How is a "site" defined, and is it tiered by size?
Per access point	Number of APs	High until you add APs	Small venues with one to three APs	A coverage upgrade multiplies the license	None, if the platform is hardware-agnostic	Do spare, mesh and outdoor APs count?
Per user or session	Logins or unique visitors	Low: follows traffic	Low-traffic or seasonal venues	Peaks, events and reconnects inflate the bill	None	What counts as a session, and is there a monthly cap?
Bundled with hardware	Hardware license term	High within one vendor	Single-vendor estates needing a basic splash page	Lock-in at refresh, limited data and integrations	Total: tied to one hardware brand	What happens to the portal and guest data if we change hardware?

Two definitions shape every quote. The first is what counts as a site. A contract may price a shopping center unit and a 400-room hotel the same, or it may tier sites by size. The second is what counts as a session. A guest whose phone reconnects after sleeping may register several sessions in one stay. Get both definitions in writing before you model anything.

When is per site pricing the right call?

Per site pricing is the right call when APs per venue are high or rising. Hotels, convention centers, stadiums and department stores fit this profile. Coverage grows with every wing, floor or concourse, but the license stays the same.

Per site pricing also suits estates planning a coverage upgrade. If a survey shows a venue needs more APs to clear dead zones, a per site license covers them at no extra cost. WiFi Site Surveys: A Practical Planning Guide explains how to size that work before you sign a license.

Per site is a poor fit for estates with many tiny locations, such as gas station kiosks or pop-up units. Each one pays a full site fee for a single AP. Ask whether the vendor offers a small-site tier, and model those locations separately.

When is per access point licensing the right call?

Per AP licensing is the right call when your venues are small and your AP counts are stable. It gives you a bill that maps exactly to your hardware inventory. A cafe chain with two APs per branch fits well. So does a retail estate with uniform store formats.

The weakness is growth. Every AP you add to fix coverage adds a license line, so the model penalizes good network design. If you are planning a refresh, model the post-refresh AP count rather than today's count. Planning a WiFi 6 to WiFi 7 access point refresh when Cisco Meraki WiFi 6 reaches end of sale covers that kind of move.

Check how the vendor counts devices. A contract can treat mesh repeaters, outdoor units and cold spares as licensable APs. Agree a written inventory definition to avoid a true-up invoice at renewal.

When do per user, per session or bundled licenses make sense?

Per user or per session

Usage pricing makes sense when traffic is low, seasonal or hard to forecast. In those cases you may prefer to pay for logins rather than for capacity. A seasonal visitor attraction or a cafe with a few dozen logins a day are typical fits.

Usage pricing gets expensive at scale and swings at peaks. A stadium on game day or a hotel hosting a conference can multiply sessions overnight. If you accept usage pricing, negotiate a monthly cap and agree in writing how reconnections are counted.

Bundled with hardware

Some hardware vendors include a basic splash page in their cloud management license. Cisco Meraki, for example, documents click-through splash pages in its dashboard. The incremental captive portal cost is zero. That is why bundled offers look strongest in a first-pass captive portal software pricing comparison.

The costs arrive later. Check whether the bundled portal supports the authentication methods, data capture and integrations you need. The bigger cost is lock-in. The portal, its branding and its guest records all live inside one hardware vendor's license. Change hardware and you rebuild all three.

What hidden costs come with guest WiFi platforms?

The headline license is only part of the captive portal cost. Six further lines either appear in quotes or stay hidden until the first invoice.

SMS verification

SMS verification confirms a visitor's cell phone number with a one-time code. SMS gateways bill per message, and rates vary by destination country. Ask whether SMS is included, capped or passed through at cost. Ask too whether a resent code is charged twice. In an airport or a tourist hotel, international rates can outweigh the license itself.

Premium social login

Social login lets guests connect with an existing account instead of typing in their details. Check which tier includes it. If the base tier offers only a click-through or email form, the upgrade becomes the real price. Also confirm who maintains the app registrations with each social platform when that platform changes its terms.

Data export and integrations

First-party data only earns its keep if it reaches your CRM, email platform or data warehouse. Confirm whether CSV export, API access and named connectors cost extra. Check too whether API calls are rate-limited by tier. WiFi Analytics depends on that data flowing freely, so price access as a core feature.

Exit belongs in the same conversation. CCPA/CPRA regulations require your processor contract to oblige the vendor to delete or return all personal data, at your choice, when the service ends. Write the return format, timescale and any fee into the contract now, not at exit.

Support tiers

Compare what each base tier covers: hours, channels, response targets and portal design changes. A portal outage on a Saturday afternoon costs a retailer the very logins it bought the platform to collect. If after-hours support is a paid tier, add it to your three-year total. Ask for uptime commitments in the service-level agreement. Purple reports 99.999% uptime on its own platform.

Hardware lock-in

You pay for lock-in at the next refresh. If your captive portal runs on only one vendor's hardware, a hardware decision forces three projects at once. You face a portal migration, a re-integration and a guest data export.

A hardware-agnostic platform separates those decisions. Purple's Guest WiFi runs as a cloud overlay on Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme and Fortinet. You keep your portal and guest data when you change hardware. Why your next WiFi upgrade doesn't need new hardware sets out the approach. Purple handled 440 million logins in 2024 across 80,000+ live venues (Purple data).

Deployment and compliance work

One-off work belongs in the comparison too. PCI-DSS treats any network not segmented from the cardholder data environment as in scope for assessment. Your guest traffic may share switches with payment terminals. If so, VLAN (virtual local area network) segmentation is a professional services line, so ask whether it is quoted or assumed. Hotels should also price the property management system (PMS) integration that lets guests log in with a room number and last name.

What does each model cost to run over 3 years?

The three examples below use illustrative rates. They show the arithmetic and are not quotes from any vendor. Swap in the rates from your own quotes and the method still holds.

Illustrative rates used throughout:

• Per site: $30 per small venue per month, $100 per hotel per month.
• Per access point: $8 per AP per month.
• Per session: $0.01 per authenticated session.
• SMS verification: $0.04 per message.

Worked example 1: a single cafe

Situation. An independent cafe runs two APs and sees about 40 logins a day, or 1,200 a month. One in five guests verifies by SMS, which comes to 240 messages a month.

Calculation.

Model	Monthly license	3-year license	3-year SMS	3-year total
Per site	$30	$1,080	$345.60	$1,425.60
Per access point	$16	$576	$345.60	$921.60
Per session	$12	$432	$345.60	$777.60

Outcome. Per session is cheapest at today's traffic, $144 below per AP over three years. The break-even sits at 1,600 sessions a month, and above that per AP wins. SMS adds 60% to the per AP license. Switching to email verification would therefore save more than switching pricing model.

Worked example 2: a 40-site retail estate

Situation. A fashion retailer runs 30 small stores with two APs each and 10 flagships with eight APs each. That makes 140 APs in total, and the estate logs about 210,000 sessions a month. A site survey recommends two extra APs in every small store next year, which would take the total to 200.

Calculation.

Model	3-year cost today (140 APs)	3-year cost after survey (200 APs)
Per site (40 × $30)	$43,200	$43,200
Per access point ($8)	$40,320	$57,600
Per session (210,000 a month)	$75,600	$75,600

Next, normalize two quotes. Quote A is per AP at $8, including standard support and CRM export. Quote B is per site at $30, plus a $100 monthly CRM connector and $150 a month for extended-hours support. Those add-ons put $9,000 on Quote B over three years, for a total of $52,200.

Outcome. On headline rates, per AP looks $2,880 cheaper. Once the add-ons are included, Quote A saves $11,880 if the property stays at 140 APs. If the survey recommendation goes ahead, Quote B saves $5,400. The AP roadmap decides this, not the rate card. Per session is the clear loser at Retail traffic volumes.

Worked example 3: a 3,000-room hotel group

Situation. A group runs 20 hotels averaging 150 rooms each. Assume one AP per three rooms, plus 15 APs in public areas per hotel, for 1,300 APs in total. Assume also 70% occupancy and 1.5 guests per room. Each guest uses two devices that authenticate once a day. On those assumptions the group logs about 189,000 sessions a month.

Calculation.

Model	Monthly license	3-year total
Per site (20 × $100)	$2,000	$72,000
Per access point (1,300 × $8)	$10,400	$374,400
Per session (189,000 × $0.01)	$1,890	$68,040
Bundled with hardware	$0 incremental	$0 license, with cost deferred to the next refresh

Outcome. Per AP costs 5.2 times as much as per site. It is the clearest case of a metric that punishes dense coverage. On paper, per session is $3,960 cheaper than per site, but a 6% rise in sessions erases the gap. Conference weekends, longer stays or a third device per guest would each push sessions that high. Per site gives the group a fixed line it can budget for, which makes it the natural fit for Hotels.

How do you compare guest WiFi quotes for your estate?

Fair guest WiFi pricing comparisons start from identical inputs. Run every quote through the same 10 steps.

A checklist to normalize quotes

1. Fix your inputs. Record venue count, AP count today and after any planned refresh, and monthly sessions from your current controller or platform.
2. Get definitions in writing. Confirm what counts as a site, which APs are licensable and what counts as a session.
3. Project 36 months. Include any price rises written into years two and three.
4. List usage charges. Include SMS per message, session overage and API calls above a tier limit.
5. Price the features you need, not the tier names. Cover social login, CRM export, PMS or point-of-sale integration and multi-language portals.
6. Price support at the level you will use. Specify hours, channels and response targets.
7. Add one-off costs. Include onboarding, portal design, and VLAN and PCI-DSS segmentation work.
8. Price exit. Cover the data return format and fee under CCPA/CPRA, notice periods and auto-renewal terms.
9. Test hardware independence. Confirm which of your current APs are supported, and what happens at refresh.
10. Check compliance evidence. Ask for ISO 27001 certification, CCPA/CPRA processor terms and data residency details.

Steps three to eight produce one comparable figure per vendor. Rank on that figure, then break ties on hardware independence and access to your guest data. If Purple is on your shortlist, put our quote through the same checklist.

Matching your property portfolio to a model

Your property portfolio	Model to favor	Why	Watch for
Single cafe or bar under 1,600 sessions a month	Per session or per access point	Lowest cost at low traffic	Summer peaks pushing sessions past break-even
Main street chain with uniform stores and stable AP counts	Per access point	Bill maps exactly to inventory	Coverage upgrades adding license lines
Retail property portfolio planning a coverage upgrade	Per site	Added APs cost nothing extra	Full site fees on one-AP kiosks
Hotel group or conference center	Per site	Dense coverage on a fixed budget line	How sites are tiered by room count
Stadium or events venue	Per site	Game-day attendee peaks do not move the bill	Exclusions for temporary event APs
Rail operator (Trains)	Per site	High passenger volumes make usage pricing volatile	Whether each train or each station counts as a site
Hospital system (Healthcare)	Per site	Patient and visitor traffic runs around the clock	Whether outbuildings count as separate sites
Single-vendor property portfolio needing only a click-through page	Bundled with hardware	No incremental license	Lock-in at the next hardware refresh

Frequently asked questions

How much does a captive portal cost?

A captive portal costs a recurring license fee, set per site, per access point, per user or session, or bundled into a hardware license. Usage charges such as SMS verification sit on top. Your total depends on venue count, AP count and monthly logins. Using this guide's illustrative rates, a two-AP cafe cost between $777.60 and $1,425.60 over three years. Model your own numbers before comparing quotes.

Is captive portal software priced per access point or per site?

It can be either, and the choice matters most for large venues. Per access point licensing bills each AP, so it suits small venues with stable hardware. Per site bills each venue at a flat rate, so it suits hotels, stadiums and flagship stores with dense coverage. In this guide's hotel example, per AP cost 5.2 times as much as per site over three years.

What hidden costs come with guest WiFi platforms?

The main hidden costs are SMS verification, premium social login, data export and integrations, support tiers and hardware lock-in. One-off lines such as onboarding, portal design and PCI DSS segmentation work also appear. Ask each vendor to price every item against your estate, then add them to a 36-month projection. In this guide's retail example, add-ons widened one quote's gap from $2,880 to $11,880.

How do I compare guest WiFi quotes?

Compare guest WiFi quotes on three-year total cost, built from the same inputs for every vendor. Fix your venue count, AP count and monthly sessions. Get metric definitions in writing. Then add usage charges, the features you need, support at your required level, one-off costs and exit terms. Rank on that total, and break ties on hardware independence and access to your guest data.

Do I need new hardware to switch guest WiFi platform?

No, not if the platform is hardware-agnostic. Purple's Guest WiFi runs as a cloud overlay on Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme and Fortinet access points. You can change your captive portal without replacing hardware. Bundled portals tied to one hardware vendor work differently. Changing platform can mean rebuilding the portal and exporting guest records at the same time.

Can I get my guest data back if I change provider?

Yes, and your contract should guarantee it. CCPA/CPRA regulations require a processor to delete or return all personal data, at the controller's choice, when the service ends. Specify the export format, timescale and any fee before you sign. Confirm whether ongoing CSV or API export sits in your plan. Data you can reach only on a premium tier is a cost of staying.

Is per session pricing cheaper for a small venue?

It can be, while traffic stays low. In this guide's cafe example, per session pricing cost $432 over three years against $576 for per access point, using illustrative rates. That advantage disappeared above 1,600 sessions a month. If your venue is seasonal, model your busiest month. Negotiate a monthly cap so a strong summer does not turn the cheapest quote into the most expensive.