Turn dwell into data. Turn data into regulars.
The captive portal that grew the email list. The dwell-time engine that defended seat turnover. The loyalty trigger that fired before the barista said hello.
Dwell, data, loyalty, focus.
Cafés don't have a guest-WiFi problem either. They have a seat-hour problem, a list-growth problem, a regular-recognition problem, and a Tuesday-afternoon problem. Purple solves all four.
Your captive portal isn't a sign-on screen. It's a marketing channel.
Most cafés print a daily WiFi password on the receipt and call it a day. The portal is doing nothing for the business. Purple turns it into the highest-converting opt-in surface in the venue.
Defend the £30/hr table without firing the barista at the laptop dweller.
A laptop user nursing a flat white for four hours blocks a high-value table. Most operators have nothing but barista pressure to defend the seat-hour. Purple drops to fair-use after 90 minutes and shows a 'free refill?' splash — monetise the squatter, don't police them.
GDPR-clean list growth from the only opt-in surface that scales.
Independents desperately want an email list. Paper signup sheets at the till are a nonstarter. The captive portal is the one place every customer goes voluntarily, every visit. Purple captures the consent, the timestamp, the IP — Article-7-clean from day one.
The 10th coffee free — without scanning, stamping, or asking.
Loyalty cards die on the till counter. Stamp Me and Loyalzoo solve it but require a barista interaction every visit. Purple counts the visit the moment the customer's device joins the SSID — every time, automatically, even when the queue is out the door.
Dwell, opt-in, lapse — measured by the network nobody else thinks of.
Café P&L is fought in 90-minute increments and per-customer email-list pence. Purple's customers measure us in seat-hour value defended, opt-in conversion lift, and lapsed-customer reactivation rate.
The captive portal is the only thing every customer touches.
Receipts get binned. Loyalty cards get lost. Newsletter signup sheets gather dust. The captive portal is the one surface that 100% of WiFi-using customers see, every single visit, on a device they're already holding. Make it the marketing channel it deserves to be.
- Custom-branded splash, no Purple branding required
- GDPR Article 7 consent log per opt-in
- Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot, and Zapier ready
- Runs on the access points you already own
We saw they didn't come in this week. We sent the right nudge.
Every regular has a rhythm. Wednesdays at 10. Fridays after the gym. Tuesday-Thursday when the office is open. Purple's presence engine watches the rhythm — and fires the right communication when it breaks.
A 'we miss you, free pastry on us' email at day 14 of absence. A 'first-time-this-week' barista nudge for the new regular. A 'long-dwell laptop user at hour 2' offer instead of a confrontation. Operator-defined moments, fired by your own café network.
The numbers cafés should be measuring — but most can't.
EPOS gives you transactions. Purple gives you visits, dwell, opt-in, lapse, reactivation, and the rhythm of every regular. The metrics that decide whether your café still exists in 18 months.
Spot regulars whose visit rhythm has broken. Reactivate them at exactly the right moment with a personal offer.
Measure the £/hour each table actually generates. Plan the layout, the hours, and the menu around it.
A/B-test splash designs and offers to lift opt-in conversion site by site, then push the winners across the estate.
Common café WiFi questions, answered.
Will customers actually opt in to email through the captive portal?
Yes — across our café customer base, opt-in rates of 30-60% per session are typical when the splash is well-designed and the value exchange is clear (free WiFi for an email + first-name basis loyalty). Compare that to a paper signup sheet, which converts at less than 1% of footfall.
How does fair-use throttling work without annoying customers?
After a configurable dwell threshold (typically 90 or 120 minutes), Purple drops the device's bandwidth and shows a polite 'enjoying it? grab a refill' splash. Customers can stay all day if they want — they just get a gentle, non-confrontational nudge to support the seat they're using.
Can we have different splash screens at different times of day?
Yes. Time-of-day rules let you run a 'morning rush' splash 7-11am, a 'study hours' splash 2-5pm, and a 'happy hour' splash from 5pm — all on the same SSID, all swapping automatically.
Do we need new access points to use Purple?
No. Purple runs as a cloud overlay on Cisco Meraki, Aruba, Ubiquiti UniFi, Ruckus, and Mikrotik hardware that's already in most cafés. We do the captive portal, presence engine, and analytics on top.
Can a single-site independent use Purple, or is it just for chains?
Both. Purple has café customers from single-site independents to 200+ store chains. The platform scales with you — start with one site, add more on a single contract, and consolidate analytics across the estate when you grow.
Ready to make the captive portal earn its keep?
Talk to a café specialist who's wired the platform into independent shops, regional chains, and the largest UK coffee groups. We'll scope a pilot in one site, prove the opt-in and reactivation lift, and roll out from there.
Featured products for Cafés
The Purple platform pieces most Cafés venues deploy on day one.
Guest WiFi platform for Cafés
Captive portals, analytics, and marketing automation as a cloud overlay.
Captive portal software for Cafés
Modern captive portals with social login, SSO, and marketing consent.
Passwordless WiFi for Cafés
EAP-TLS, iPSK, and Passpoint — replace shared passwords with identity.
Recommended solution for Cafés
WiFi for marketing teams. First-party data capture, footfall analytics, and CRM-triggered automation built for venues that monetise visitor data.
See WiFi for marketing teams →Related industries
Other verticals running on the same Purple platform.
