What actually drives the cost
Six variables. Most quotes you receive are some combination of these, weighted differently.
Number of locations
The single biggest lever, because most vendors bill per location. Two venues on a per-location plan cost exactly twice one venue, regardless of whether the second one is quiet. Account-based plans break that link up to a ceiling: VoqadoWiFi Growth is $49 per month and covers 3 locations, after which you move to Enterprise.
Access points and controller
Some vendors price per access point rather than per site, which inverts the maths. A single large venue with twelve APs and modest guest volume is cheap on a per-location plan and expensive on a per-AP plan. A small venue with one AP is the reverse.
Contacts and logins
Free and entry tiers are usually capped on volume. Our Starter plan allows 25 logins per month, which is a demonstration allowance rather than an operating plan. Once you pass a cap you either upgrade or lose capture, so estimate your monthly connection count honestly before choosing a tier.
SMS, if you use it
Email sending is normally bundled. SMS almost never is, because it carries a real per-message carrier cost that varies by country. If SMS is part of your plan, price it separately per message and per destination, and assume it will become the largest variable line on your bill at volume.
Hardware
If you already run a supported controller, hardware cost is zero. If you do not, it is either a one-off capital purchase or it is bundled into a subscription, which spreads the cost and adds switching friction. Existing Omada or UniFi estates avoid this line entirely on VoqadoWiFi.
Your own time
The line nobody budgets. Portal design, campaign setup, list hygiene, and answering the guest who cannot connect all consume staff hours. A platform that saves two hours a month is worth more than one that saves ten dollars.
The five pricing models, explained
Every vendor in this category uses one of these. Knowing which one you are being sold tells you more than the headline number.
Per location
Model 1A flat monthly fee for each venue, sometimes discounted at volume.
Transparent, easy to forecast, and fair when every venue is similar in size and traffic.
Cost scales linearly forever. A quiet twentieth site costs the same as your flagship. Growth is directly taxed.
Ask at what site count volume discounting starts, and get it in the contract rather than the sales call.
Per account or tier
Model 2One subscription covers a bundle of locations up to a ceiling, then you move up a tier.
Cheapest model for small groups. VoqadoWiFi Growth at $49 per month covering 3 locations is an example of this shape.
Ceilings create cliffs. Adding one venue beyond the tier limit can move you to a materially different price, sometimes a quoted one.
Find out exactly what happens at location number four, and whether the next step is a published tier or a sales conversation.
Per access point
Model 3Billing follows the number of managed access points rather than sites or guests.
Predictable for stable networks and sensible for managed service providers with mixed-vendor fleets.
Punishes dense deployments. A large venue with good coverage pays more than a small venue with poor coverage and identical guest volume.
Confirm whether mesh nodes, repeaters, and spare units count toward the total.
Quote only
Model 4No published price. Cost is set through a sales process and usually an annual contract.
Genuine flexibility for large or unusual estates, and the only realistic model for enterprise procurement.
You cannot budget or compare without entering a sales cycle, and the price depends partly on how well you negotiate.
Ask for the contract term, the auto-renewal notice period, and the uplift cap at renewal before discussing features.
Self-hosted or open source
Model 5No licence fee. You run the software on your own infrastructure.
Removes recurring per-site fees entirely and keeps guest data on infrastructure you control.
Cost moves to hosting and engineering hours, which are easy to underestimate and hard to stop paying.
Be honest about who patches it, who is on call when sessions stop being issued, and what their hour is worth.
Three worked examples
Every assumption is listed above its table. Where a figure is hypothetical it says so. Replace our assumptions with your own quotes and the arithmetic still works.
Example 1: a single café
- ·One location, one TP-Link Omada access point already installed and working.
- ·Roughly 200 guest connections per month.
- ·Email campaigns only. No SMS.
- ·Portal built once by the owner in an evening, then largely left alone.
- ·Comparison column assumes a hypothetical per-location vendor quoting $49 per location per month. That figure is an assumption for the arithmetic, not a quoted price from any named vendor. Substitute the real quote you receive.
| Cost line | Account-based plan | Per-location plan |
|---|---|---|
| Software subscription | $49/mo (Growth) | $49/mo (assumed rate × 1 site) |
| Hardware | $0 (Omada in place) | $0 to several hundred if the vendor requires its own router |
| SMS | $0 (not used) | $0 (not used) |
| Twelve-month software total | $588 | $588 at the assumed rate |
At one site the two models are indistinguishable. What differs is the entry path: on a free tier you can run the whole flow at zero cost until you outgrow the cap, whereas a trial-only vendor puts you on the meter on a fixed date whether or not you have finished configuring anything. For a single venue, judge on setup effort and support, not on price.
Example 2: a three-venue group
- ·Three owned venues in one city, one marketing manager across all three.
- ·Roughly 1,500 guest connections per month in total.
- ·All three sites already run UniFi. No hardware purchase.
- ·Email only, with a shared guest list across all three venues.
- ·Comparison column again assumes a hypothetical $49 per location per month rate, used purely to show how the models diverge.
| Cost line | Account-based plan | Per-location plan |
|---|---|---|
| Software subscription | $49/mo (Growth covers 3 locations) | $147/mo (assumed rate × 3 sites) |
| Hardware | $0 | $0 |
| SMS | $0 (not used) | $0 (not used) |
| Twelve-month software total | $588 | $1,764 at the assumed rate |
This is the band where the pricing model, not the feature list, decides the bill. A tiered account plan that includes three locations costs the same as one location; a per-location plan costs three times as much. The arithmetic only holds while you are inside the tier, which is why the next example matters.
Example 3: a twenty-site chain
- ·Twenty sites, a central marketing team, and an IT function that owns the network.
- ·Roughly 12,000 guest connections per month across the estate.
- ·Mixed hardware, which is itself a shortlisting constraint before price is discussed.
- ·SMS used for a monthly promotion to a subset of contacts.
- ·No published price exists at this scale from most vendors including us, so the figures below are deliberately left as ranges to be filled from your own quotes.
| Cost line | Account-based plan | Per-location plan |
|---|---|---|
| Software subscription | Enterprise, quoted | 20 × your negotiated per-site rate |
| Hardware | $0 if the estate is already supported | Potentially significant if the vendor requires its own kit |
| SMS | Per message, per country, on top | Per message, per country, on top |
| Twelve-month software total | Quote-dependent | Quote-dependent, but 20× a per-site rate is the floor |
Above roughly ten sites almost everything becomes negotiated, and the published price stops being the useful number. The variables that actually move a twenty-site total are the volume discount curve, the contract term, the renewal uplift cap, and whether hardware is bundled. Get all four in writing before comparing two proposals, because a lower monthly rate on a three-year term with an uncapped uplift is not the cheaper deal.
Stop reading averages. Model your own venue.
Every worked example above is arithmetic on assumptions. The only figures that matter for your decision are your monthly connections, your realistic capture rate, and your margin per returning guest. The ROI calculator takes those three and tells you what a subscription has to beat.
Then compare shortlists on the WiFi marketing software and captive portal software guides, or check hardware fit under integrations.
The costs that show up later
None of these are unique to any one vendor, and all of them are cheaper to ask about before signature.
Annual contracts sold as monthly prices
A headline monthly figure often assumes twelve months paid up front, with a materially higher rate for true month-to-month. Ask which number you were shown.
Automatic renewal and uplift
Notice periods of sixty or ninety days are common, and renewal uplifts are frequently uncapped unless you negotiate a cap. Both are cheaper to fix before signature than after.
Hardware lock-in
Bundled routers make the first venue easy and the fifth switch expensive. If hardware came with the subscription, work out what leaving costs before you scale on it.
Overage on logins or contacts
Find out what happens when you exceed a cap: automatic upgrade, throttled capture, or a bill. All three exist in this market and they are not equivalent.
Per-location fees on things that are not the subscription
Onboarding, portal design, additional admin seats, and support tiers are sometimes billed per site even when the software is not.
Sending costs you already pay elsewhere
If the platform pushes contacts into Mailchimp or Klaviyo rather than sending itself, your real cost is both bills. That can still be the right architecture, but count it.
The integration that needs a person
POS, PMS, and CRM integrations are frequently priced separately or scoped as professional services. Ask whether yours is included, extra, or on a roadmap.
Data export at the end
The cost of leaving is part of the cost of arriving. Confirm during evaluation that you can export a complete guest CSV yourself, without a support ticket.
What a free tier is really for
We publish a free plan and we would rather be straight about what it does. VoqadoWiFi Starter costs nothing forever and allows 25 logins per month at one location. That is enough to build your portal, connect your controller, watch a real guest log in, and see a review request fire. It is a proof, and proofs are genuinely useful before spending money.
Under the assumption of 200 connections a month used in Example 1, a café passes 25 logins in roughly four days. If your venue is busier than a quiet office reception, treat Starter as an evaluation tool and budget for Growth.
A trial is a paid plan with the meter off until a date. A free tier has no end date and a hard cap. Both are useful; only one of them lets you sit on it indefinitely.
Your time configuring the portal, writing the first campaign, and keeping the list clean is real. On a free plan it is the entire cost, which is why the setup effort of a platform matters more at this tier than the price does.
On Starter, the cap is the cap. Before committing to any vendor free plan, ask whether exceeding it upgrades you automatically, stops capture, or generates a bill, because all three exist in this market.
One more constraint worth repeating before you spend an evening on setup: VoqadoWiFi supports TP-Link Omada and Ubiquiti UniFi only. If your venue runs anything else, no tier of ours is the right answer and the captive portal comparison lists the platforms that will fit. Terminology is explained in the glossary.