Paid WiFi Access

Scenario and requirements

Although is a common practice to provide free WiFi access to guests and visitors in public spaces, there are situations when you might want to monetize your WiFi access. Here the most common options required in such a scenario:

• Offer Free Complimentary access to guests with limited capabilities. The complimentary plan can be limited in time (for example 1 hour per day) or in performances (for example MAX 1MB/s in download) or both.
• Offer Premium Paid Plans: create one or multiple paid access plans that offer a longer time or access to the Internet or better performances.
• Access Codes: the above Premium Paid Plans can be sold and distributed by means of Access Codes. For example, you can sell manually the codes at the reception, or send a premium Access Code to VIP guests before they arrive

User Experience

The user will connect to the WiFi and he is presented with multiple options:

• Connect with the complimentary access plan (optional - you can disable it)
• Explore and buy the Premium plans
• Use an Access Code previously received or bought
• Login with an existing account (for example the user might have registered and bought the service already the previous day, so he can use his existing service)

Here a live example of the experience:

Scan the QR code with your phone to try the experience. or click here to see a live demo

How to set up the service

In order to setup the service you need to follow the following steps:

1. Configure a Payment Gateway. 
   First of all, if you use PayPal, you need to retrieve the API credentials as described in this article and on the video below:
   
   
   
   Once retrieved the credentials you can go in the Marketplace and open the PayPal Connect app and follow the user guide to configure it.
   
   
2. To complete the setup, you need to choose your payment gateway under the Payment options in the Preferences.
   Configure your currency in the Preferences > International Settings.
   
   
3. Create Paid Plans
   Follow this article to create new Paid Plans. Make sure the set the plan as a "paid plan", specify the price and set the option "enable on the Splash Page" to make sure end users can see it in the list of available plans.
   
   
    
4. Create a Complimentary Plan. Create a dedicated plan by specifying the limits that you want (time, speed or both).
   
   
5. Create a Login Profile. When charing for internet access, we strongly recommend enabling the User Account login method, so that each user will have a unique set of credentials that can be used to login in the WiFi portal at different times and form multiple devices.
6. Create a Splash Page using the template "Paid Plans Portal". This template is optimized for this type of experience.
   In the Splash Page configuration, you can customize the text of the buttons that appear in the home page. If you leave an option empty, the button will be hidden automatically.
7. Assign the Splash Page and Login Profile you created to the Venue. Make sure to set as the Default Internet Plan the one you created for Complimentary access or leave it empty if you don't want to provide a free option.