The Real Cost of Treating Guest WiFi as a Utility

The Calculation That Changes Minds

Most pitches for WiFi marketing count what it earns. This page counts the other side: what you give up while your guest WiFi is a password on a chalkboard.

An industry average would say little about a venue of your size. Below is a worked illustration with every assumption written down. Swap in your own numbers and the arithmetic still works.

Step 1: How Many Contacts Are You Discarding?

Start with how many devices join your guest network on a normal day. Your Omada or UniFi controller lists connected clients, so count them over an ordinary week and take the daily average.

Not every connection is a new person. Regulars reconnect, and some guests carry two devices. With a password network you cannot tell them apart, which is part of the problem.

Illustration, not a benchmark: a cafe averages 50 guest connections a day. Assume 40% of those are guests on their first visit (20 people), and 30% of those first timers tick the marketing box when asked (6 people). That is 6 new contacts a day, or 6 x 365 = 2,190 a year.

With password WiFi, that number is zero. The visits still happen, the devices still connect, and nothing is recorded: no email address, no consent, no visit history.

Ask for marketing consent as its own choice, separate from accepting the WiFi terms, with the box unticked. VoqadoWiFi's explicit consent mode does this. Then your opt in share is the share of guests who actually chose it, so measure yours rather than assume ours.

Step 2: What Would Those Contacts Be Worth?

A contact is only worth something if some of them come back because you asked. That is the number you need to estimate, and the honest answer is that you will only know it after you measure it.

Illustration, continued: the list grows from zero to 2,190 over the year, so the average size across the year is about 1,100. Assume one email a month, and assume each email brings back 1 in 100 people on the list for a visit they would not otherwise have made. That is 11 extra visits a month, or 132 a year. At an average visit worth $28, that is $3,696 of revenue in the first year.

Three things to keep in mind:

• The 40%, 30%, 1 in 100 and $28 are all assumptions. Change any one and the answer moves in proportion.
• That figure is revenue. Your profit is that number times your margin on a visit.
• You can measure the "1 in 100" for real by holding back half your list from one email and comparing who comes back, as we describe in our guide to attributing revenue to WiFi campaigns.

Step 3: The Compounding Effect of the List You Did Not Build

A list is a stock built up from a daily flow. A guest who visited once in March and was never asked is gone. Each month you wait is a month of contacts you never get back.

The list also shrinks over time. People move away, change email address or unsubscribe. So the list you would have had is smaller than the sum of every sign up, but it is still much larger than zero, and a venue that starts two years late starts from zero.

Step 4: What About After You Launch?

Contacts from before launch are gone. Everything from launch day on is yours, and the guest list is yours to export as a CSV at any time.

What it costs on VoqadoWiFi, from our pricing page:

• Starter is free forever: 500 guest logins a month and 1 location.
• Growth is $49 a month: 5,000 guest logins a month, up to 3 locations, and Mailchimp sync, which copies guests into your own Mailchimp audience. Before you email from Mailchimp, make sure you are sending only to guests who agreed to marketing.
• Limits are soft. Guests are never cut off for going over. There is no card checkout; a person on our team switches on paid plans and invoices monthly.

In the illustration above, 50 connections a day is roughly 1,500 logins a month, which is over Starter's 500, so that cafe would belong on Growth.

It only works if your network runs on TP-Link Omada or Ubiquiti UniFi. We do not support other hardware, and we do not sell hardware or internet service. Our own post visit emails (thank you, review request and similar) are switching on venue by venue as email goes live, so for now plan on sending campaigns through Mailchimp.

When not to bother: if nobody at the venue will write an email at least every month or two, collecting addresses you never use gains you nothing. A WiFi login with no marketing still gives you visit counts, but the cost case on this page assumes you will actually send.

The Realistic First-Year ROI

The cost side is easy to know. The revenue side is not, until you measure it.

So turn the question round and ask how many extra visits pay for the plan. On Growth, a year costs $49 x 12 = $588. At an average visit of $28, you need $588 / $28 = 21 extra visits a year, fewer than 2 a month, to cover the plan in revenue terms. On Starter, the money cost is zero and the cost is your time.

Add your own time: the setup on your controller, and the time it takes to write each email.

Your next step: count guest connections on your controller for one normal week, put that number into Step 1 with your own assumptions, and see whether the break even of about 2 extra visits a month looks easy or hard for your venue.