5 Best Captive Portal Software Platforms

Peadar Gormley • January 22, 2025

This is a complete list of the best captive portal software and tools today.

I created it to help you with two specific challenges that I know you’re facing right now:

First one is that, well, if you’re planning to offer guest WiFi access to customers then, you have no choice but to use a captive portal software.

The other, because (unfortunately,) you’ve probably already realized that choosing a tool to manage the captive portal is far more difficult than it might seem.

For one, there are plenty of such solutions available on the market. Many of these tools also offer different functionality and capabilities, making it quite a challenge to pick the one that’s best for you.

Hence this guide – It will show you what the best captive portal software solutions are and it will help you decide which one of those would be ideal for you.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

We’ll look at the concept of what captive portal software is, in general.
We’ll discuss what are the most common capabilities of such tools.
We will also look at more unique and advanced features some of these tools offer.
I will also show you how to choose captive portal software based on your business objectives and needs.
And finally, I will show you what the best captive portal software tools are on the market today.

That’s quite a lot to cover so, let’s get right into it.

What exactly is a captive portal software?

When we use this term – captive portal software – we refer to a solution deployed on an existing network infrastructure that helps authenticate and manage user access to the network.

Note that we’re talking about software here, not a captive portal tool. I admit that both terms sound almost identical, yet, when it comes to a captive portal, they refer to two different solutions.

A captive portal tool is typically a broader networking product, like a router or access point. It’s focusing on enabling a captive portal functionality within the network’s or device’s ecosystem (for example, Cisco Meraki or Ubiquiti UniFi.)
Captive portal software, on the other hand, is an independent software solution that you can deployed on an existing network infrastructure.

Let’s break it even further:

Firstly, a captive portal is the system that redirects users to a specific web page (called a splash page) to register, login, or accept the terms and conditions before accessing the Internet.

However…

A captive portal is not the page a user sees when they’re logging in to your guest WiFi. That’s a splash page, and that is just a part of captive portal’s capabilities.

A captive portal is the entire system that governs the process. And as part of its functionality, the captive portal that redirects a user to the splash page.

The captive portal also authenticates users, and recognizes whether this is the person’s first-time or returning visit.

The captive portal collects their user data (such as their email or social login.) It forwards those to your CRM or the email platform. It also provides user analytics, and delivers insights into user behavior, demographics, and network usage.

Captive portal provides access control, helps you manage bandwidth limits, session duration or user quotas, too.

In short, captive portal software manages the entire process.

Captive Portal Software vs. Splash Page

The reason I’ve been focusing so much on explaining captive portal software is because it’s quite easy to confuse it for a splash page software.

At first sight, the two might seem quite similar, too, after all.

Both assist with authenticating users into a public network. Splash page is what users (and you) see when logging in to your guest WiFi. So, it’s easy to start thinking that element you see is the actual captive portal software.

In turn, it’s equally easy to start evaluating splash page solutions, thinking that you’re buying a solution to manage your entire guest WiFi access.

But you’re not.

So, to make the difference between them clear, I created this comparison of splash page software and captive portal software.

	Splash Page Software	Captive Portal Software
Primary Purpose	Displays branded content, promotions, or announcements.	Manages network access by requiring user authentication.
Network Access Control	No direct control over internet access.	Controls internet access; users must authenticate or accept terms.
Authentication	Optional or not required.	Essential; users must log in, accept terms, or use vouchers.
Usage Scenarios	Informational displays, advertising, or marketing campaigns.	Public Wi-Fi networks, hotels, airports, and corporate access control.
Integration	Limited or standalone; often for promotional purposes.	Integrates with payment gateways, CRM, analytics, and security systems.
Legal Compliance	Rarely ensures compliance with regulations like GDPR.	Typically ensures compliance by logging user data and presenting terms.
User Interaction	Focused on showcasing visuals and information.	Limited or standalone, often for promotional purposes.
Analytics & Insights	Limited or specific to content engagement.	Comprehensive insights into user demographics, behavior, and network usage.
Security Features	Minimal or none; not designed for securing network access.	Includes features like content filtering, firewalls, and usage monitoring.
Typical Use Cases	Digital signage, kiosks, or standalone marketing tools.	Guest Wi-Fi management in public spaces, hotels, or businesses.

In short…

Splash Page Software is a tool for delivering content. Captive Portal Software, on the other hand, is a tool you use to manage and control user access to a guest WiFi.

What are the most common capabilities of a captive portal tool?

I’ve deliberately broken this information down into two sections.

The first section – this one – focuses on features and capabilities that almost every captive portal software includes in its offering.

The other focuses on more unique features that only some of such platforms offer.

The reason for the split is that I want you to fully understand the most foundational capabilities of captive portal tools first, and only then, start considering those tools for their unique offering.

So, starting with the most common capabilities….

User authentication

All captive portal tools offer various forms of logging users into guest WiFi. This could include login with username and password, email address, social media login (i.e., social WiFi) or providing free guest access.

User data collection

Similarly, all captive portal software tools allow you to capture valuable customer data on your WiFi network – their emails, phone numbers, social media credentials, etc.

CRM/marketing tools integrations

If you think about it, the captive portal software plays two distinct roles in your marketing.

We’ve discussed the first one already – With the software, you can manage and control access to the guest WiFi.

The other one is that the software allows you to capture user data and add or update it in your CRM or email marketing tool, usually in real-time.

As a result, such integrations, usually done through API’s or webhooks, form the tool’s core capabilities, too.

Splash page / guest experience customization

With a captive portal software, you can transform your guest WiFi into a branded journey.

With most tools, you can add your logo to the login portal, choose your brand colors, and tailor the portal’s look and feel to match your brand entirely.

Visitor and network usage analytics

Captive portals also collect a wealth of data and information about your visitors and how they use the network.

From recognizing returning visitors to providing advanced analytics for segmentation, event tracking, and customer profiling, they help you tailor the whole guest experience to each user even more.

Captive portal software – unique capabilities

In this section, I’ve listed capabilities that some tools offer while others don’t.

This section is important because it’s these unique capabilities that might help you decide which captive portal software is best for you.

After all, since all of them offer capabilities I’ve listed above, it’s hard to use any of those as a differentiator that would confirm that a particular platform would deliver to your needs.

That’s why I recommend you review the below section carefully, looking at capabilities that would match what you’re expecting to get from WiFi marketing.

Review and feedback engine

It’s impossible to underestimate the value of reviews and customer feedback for a business like yours.

Star ratings, reviews, comments can drive more customers, more market visibility, even boost your initial SEO efforts.

The challenge you often face is trying to entice customers to provide their feedback and write reviews.

Well, that’s one thing some captive portal tools help you achieve.

For example, my captive portal tool, MyPlace, offers a powerful online review and feedback engine.

It allows you to create post-visit review prompts. Ask your users to complete an NPS survey. Send them automated feedback requests, and more.

Captive portal software with NPS survey results.

Dual-branded guest portals per site

With this option, a brand with a single location can provide two different WIFi branded experiences.

In other words, you can use segmentation data to target completely different experiences at different customer segments, and provide an even more customized experience to each.

Webhooks

I agree, a webhook might not seem like a unique feature at all. It’s function is to expand on an existing feature, after all. And yet, webhooks can offer another opportunity to integrate your captive portal software external systems and process real-time data or event notifications, such as user logins or device connections.

Micro-targeting

With micro-targeting, you can segment users by location in larger WiFi deployments or multi brand networks and customize their brand experience.

Device recognition

Customers only register once with automatic connection on each subsequent visit.

Web Content Filtering

This is another feature present in some captive portal tools but not in all.

And as the name suggests, this particular feature let’s you specify what content categories users can and cannot access on the guest WiFi. For example, you can block access to compromised sites, sites featuring hate speech, promoting illegal drugs, or download sites and so on.

Data export

Major part of any captive portal tool is the ability to integrate it with external tools – CRM systems, email marketing platforms, sms platforms, etc.

But there are also instances where you might want to import collected data to your external system manually. It might be that you’re using a system without any active integrations with captive portal tools. Or perhaps, you cannot connect the two for security reasons.

So, when reviewing the best captive portal software, pay attention to whether it offers an option to manually export the data.

This way, you’ll still be able to transfer collected user data between the tools, although, it might not happen in real-time.

And with that out of the way, let’s see what the best captive portal software is currently.

The Best Captive Portal Software in 2025

1/ MyPlace

Turn WiFi into marketing machine with MyPlace

MyPlace (disclaimer, this is my app) is a captive portal software focusing on helping clients to capture more emails and customer data on guest WiFi networks.

With MyPlace venues, restaurants, hotels, bars, and other companies in the hospitality and other industries can capture valuable email and marketing data on their customers and forward it to their CRM or other marketing tools.

And needless to say, such data gives them an incredible opportunity to:

build much better and more focused email lists,
remarket and/or upsell to the customer after they have left the physical location
understand their customers better to build stronger connections with them
boost sales, increase signups to loyalty programs, get more reviews, and more.

In other words, with MyPlace, you turn your guest WiFi into an amazing marketing powerhouse.

Personally, I like to think of MyPlace as a connector service between the network (Cisco, Ubiquiti, Ruckus etc) and the many marketing/CRM apps out there.

And MyPlace provides a whole range of features to power your WiFi marketing:

Email capture
Social logins
Advanced email verification
Customizable splash page
Return guest recognition
Dual-branded portals per site
Visitor analytics
Smart WiFi usage controls
User segmentation
Micro-targeting
Event tracking
Device recognition
Data export
UniFi site hosting
NPS surveys
Review prompts
API and webhooks
Advanced dynamic integrations, and more.

Supported network infrastructure:

UniFi
Meraki
Cambium
Ruckus
Aruba
Omada

Integrations with marketing tools:

Mailchimp
ActiveCampaign
Airship
Facebook Custom Audiences
Klaviyo
Hubspot
Salesforce
and many others through Zapier.

2/ Purple.ai

Purple.ai, sometimes referred to just as Purple, is an indoor location platform that helps businesses with physical locations deliver and manage Guest WiFi to customers and use Digital Wayfinding to enhance visitor experiences and collect valuable customer analytics data.

And of course, as part of its offering, Purple includes a captive portal software that allows its clients to provide secure guest WiFi access for visitors.

Just like other captive portal software platforms, with Purple, you can customize the splash page and the customer experience. Purple allows you to capture visitor contact details, log users in with social credentials (Facebook, X, and LinkedIn,) emails, custom forms, and more.

Core Features:

Guest WiFi & Captive Portal
Digital Wayfinding & Interactive Maps
WiFi Analytics
Integration with various marketing and CRM platforms.

Supported network infrastructure:

UniFi
Meraki
Cambium
Ruckus
Aruba
MikroTik
OpenWRT
Omada

3/ Beambox

Beambox is not a dedicated captive portal software. It’s a bigger, all-in-one WiFi marketing platform that offers the ability to create and manage captive portals as one of its many features. On top of that, Beambox allows you to also send marketing emails, generate QR codes for your business, and build customer loyalty with SMS marketing.

Core Features:

Guest WiFi
Captive Portal
SMS Marketing
Email Marketing
Online Reviews Management
QR Code Generator

Supported network infrastructure:

UniFi
Meraki
Cambium
Ruckus
Aruba
MikroTik
OpenWRT
Omada

4/ Adentro (formerly Zenreach)

Adentro, (formerly known as Zenreach,) is a WiFi marketing platform designed to help brick-and-mortar businesses create stronger connections with their in-store customers. The platform offers captive portal software, powerful real-time guest analytics and customer insights, customer email database solution, and custom audiences.

Core Features:

Guest WiFi
Captive Portal
Email Marketing
Cloud Dashboard
Customer Email

Supported network infrastructure:

Meraki

5/ Cloud4wi

What makes Cloud4wi different from the other four captive portal software on my list is its strict focus on the enterprise market. Based on the company’s claims (on the website, for example) it seems that Cloud4wi develops its product for large multi-location companies, a fact also reflected in the company’s offering.

Core Features: