“What’s the Wi-Fi?” It is the most-asked question in your building, and every one of them lands on a member of staff who was in the middle of something: taking an order, making a drink, closing a bill.
A password on a chalkboard, a table tent or a laminated card sounds like the simplest possible answer. In practice:
From a board across the room. kopiteduh2024 becomes kopiteduh2O24 and the customer is back at the counter.
When the board is out of sight, or the writing has faded, or they simply prefer to ask, it is your staff who answer.
Whoever asks gets it, then their friend gets it, then it is in a Google review, then it is on the phone of someone on the bench outside who has never bought anything.
A phone that connected once reconnects every time it passes the door, for as long as the password lasts.
And every regular mildly annoyed for the trouble.
All that generosity, and you cannot name a single person who used it.
When someone joins your Wi-Fi, a small page appears on their phone with your name, your logo and your colours. They tap Continue with Google or Continue with Apple, or type an email, and they are online. Two seconds, no password to type, nobody to ask.
There is nothing to pass around, because there is no password. The person outside can see your Wi-Fi, but the sign-in page and the time limit apply to them exactly as they apply to everyone else — and if you would rather nobody outside connected at all, turning the signal down so it does not reach the pavement is worth doing anyway.
Nothing on the wall. The page arrives on the customer’s phone when they join the network.
Nothing to type. One tap on Google or Apple, or an email address if they prefer.
Nothing to change. There is no password to rotate, so there is no week of explaining.
A tap on Google is quicker than reading a chalkboard and typing thirteen characters. Most people do not think twice.
Regulars are not asked again. Someone who signed in last week reconnects on their own, within the period you set, and simply finds themselves online. The customers who come in most often are the ones asked least often.
And if you would rather nobody was ever turned away, you can run a one-tap sign-in that collects nothing at all: you keep the branded page and the time limits and give up the mailing list. That is a choice, and it is yours.
The sign-in page is the one moment in a walk-in business when a customer volunteers who they are, in exchange for something they actually want.
When they tap Google or leave an email, you get a real name and a real address — checked for typos and throwaway accounts before it reaches your list — belonging to somebody who has sat in your place. That is a mailing list you can use on a quiet Tuesday.
Getting online and agreeing to hear from you are two different things. Marketing consent is its own unticked box and never a condition of the Wi-Fi.
Pick your country when you set up and the right rules apply on their own.
Usually, yes.
A branded sign-in page is a standard feature of business Wi-Fi equipment, and it is one small setting changed on the box you already have. If your internet provider’s box is locked — common with bundled fibre routers — a small router that sits behind it does the job, and we will tell you exactly which one.
Send us a photo of the box and we will confirm before you spend anything.
Forty makes have their own page. See the full list →
The Café plan is $30 a month per venue after a 14-day free trial. Social sign-in, email sign-in, time and speed limits and a staff plan are all included. No per-customer charge, and no device cap except the one you set.
And with it, every “what’s the Wi-Fi?” at the counter.
One coffee, one laptop, the best seat, nine till five. Let the equipment have the awkward conversation.
You cannot email a card payment. The four seconds when a walk-in tells you who they are, and how to keep the junk addresses out.
The A-board faces the wrong way and Instagram showed it to eleven people. Get on the one screen everybody in the room is reading.
It is the reason your staff get interrupted. A password has to be typed, told, and eventually shared, it never expires, and changing it is a week of explaining. It also tells you nothing about who used your Wi-Fi.
A sign-in page. The customer joins the network, a page with your name and logo appears on their phone, and they tap once to get online. There is no password, so there is nothing to pass around and nothing to change.
They see the network, but they meet the same sign-in page and the same time limit as everybody else, so free access for life off a shared password is no longer possible. Turning the signal down so it does not reach the pavement is worth doing as well.
Only if you want them to. You can run a one-tap sign-in that collects nothing at all and keep the branded page and the time limits; you give up the mailing list in exchange. Where you do collect an address, marketing consent is a separate unticked box and never a condition of getting online.
One tap on Google or Apple, which is faster than reading a board and typing thirteen characters. A device that signed in recently reconnects on its own, so regulars are rarely asked at all.
