What is the best captive portal software?
It depends on what the portal has to do after the sign-in. All 17 platforms compared here run a branded captive portal. They differ on email and SMS marketing, footfall analytics, staff WiFi, multi-tenant iPSK, ISO 27001 certification and whether there is a free plan. The table scores each one on those eight criteria.
How were these platforms chosen?
They are the captive portal vendors Purple has published a head-to-head comparison for, 16 of them plus Purple. Vendors whose product is cloud RADIUS or network access control rather than a guest portal, such as SecureW2, Portnox and JumpCloud, are compared on the cloud RADIUS providers page instead.
Which captive portal software has a free plan?
Purple has a permanently free Connect tier, suited to a single venue. Among the others, GoZone publishes a free tier. The rest offer a time-limited trial or are quote-only, according to their own pricing pages at the time of review.
Which captive portal software also runs staff WiFi?
Purple runs passwordless WPA2/3-Enterprise staff WiFi on the same platform as the guest portal. Cloudi-Fi and IronWiFi also offer cloud RADIUS and 802.1X. Cloud4Wi, EthoStream and Nonius cover it only in part, and the rest do not include it.
Which captive portal platforms are ISO 27001 certified?
Purple is ISO 27001 certified, alongside GDPR, CCPA, Cyber Essentials and B Corp. None of the other comparisons records an ISO 27001 certificate: several vendors publish SOC 2 or GDPR positions instead, and IronWiFi states ISO 27001 alignment rather than certification.
Do I need new access points for captive portal software?
Usually not. Most of these platforms overlay the access points you already run. The exceptions are EthoStream and Nonius, which design and install the network as a bundled service, and Cisco Spaces, which runs on Cisco hardware only.