How to price guest WiFi for your clients: reseller margins

Reselling guest WiFi comes down to the gap between what the platform charges you and what you charge the venue, and how much of that gap your own time uses up. This guide works through it with CaptiFi's partner rate card, rendered here in USD.

If you haven't yet decided whether to refer, resell or white-label, the guide to guest WiFi for MSPs compares the three models, and the partner programme page sets out CaptiFi's terms for each. This post is about the money once you've chosen to resell.

What CaptiFi charges a reseller

A CaptiFi reseller pays a monthly wholesale rate per client, set by the client's plan, with the first venue included and a separate rate for each extra venue. You bill the client yourself at whatever price you choose, and your clients never see CaptiFi pricing or a CaptiFi invoice.

CaptiFi's partner pages describe the margin at the public price as 30 to 40%. The last column works it out line by line for USD, rounded to the nearest whole per cent, where it runs from 35% to 43%; across the six currencies it runs from 35% to 41% on the plans and from 37% to 44% on extra venues. A custom wholesale price for a particular client can be agreed with your account manager, and there are custom plans for 100+ sites.

For a venue that only wants sign-ins and a guest list, partners can also use a capture-only client plan with the Essentials feature set and 1,000 new guests a month, billed at the Essentials wholesale rate.

Worked examples at and above the public price

Sold at the public price, a single-venue Growth client leaves you $50 a month, which is $600 over a year. Nothing stops you charging more, and the venue is buying your installation and support along with the platform. The table rounds a price of 1.3 times the public Growth price to a whole figure, and adds a hypothetical client with three venues.

The three-venue row is Growth for the first venue plus two extra venues, at $35 each at the public price and $20 each wholesale. Extra venues are billed per venue on your side too, so a small group adds margin with every site it opens.

Raising the price by 30% raised the margin from $50 to $89 a month, because the wholesale cost doesn't move. So price on what you deliver, such as the install and a monthly review with the owner, with the platform as one part of it.

What 20 client venues add up to

On Growth at the public price, 20 single-venue clients bring in $2,580 a month against a wholesale bill of $1,580. That leaves $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year, before set-up fees, support contracts or any price above the public one.

It's also before your own costs, which is where the support hours come in; with the fleet overview and the morning health digest on CaptiFi's partner dashboard, you usually hear about an offline device before the owner does.

Your wholesale statement is emailed on the 1st of each month with every client's plan, venues, wholesale, retail and margin, so you can invoice clients without logging in. A 12-month chart plots your wholesale bill against the margin you kept; if the bill rises while the margin line stays flat, it's time to look at your retail prices.

Referral commission or resale margin, per client

Per client, reselling at the public price earns more than referring, and the difference pays for billing the venue and taking its first support call. A CaptiFi referral partner earns 20% of every payment the client makes to CaptiFi, for the client's lifetime, excluding refunds, while CaptiFi sells to, bills and supports the venue. The referred venue pays the same as signing up directly.

At the public price the gap between the first two columns is $24.20 a month per client. That's your pay for invoicing the venue and taking its support calls. If an average client takes more of your time than that covers, referral suits your business better, or your resale price needs to go up. Your partner account runs one model at a time, so this is a decision for the whole business. The guide to referral commission covers the referral side in detail.

How to build a client price

Build the price from the wholesale rate, your support time, a one-off set-up fee and the hardware, then check the margin before you round it. If you already charge a set-up fee and a flat monthly fee for managed services, guest WiFi fits the same shape.

1. Start with the wholesale rate for the client's plan and number of venues, from the table above.
2. Add your monthly support time. On CaptiFi, a reseller's clients send support tickets to your support email and the Tickets page, not to CaptiFi, and offline alerts for CaptiFi devices at client venues copy to your partner support inbox. Estimate the hours a typical venue will take, multiply by your hourly rate, and add that to the monthly figure.
3. Charge a set-up fee once for the one-off work: the controller's external portal and walled garden, the splash design, the client's dashboard login, the venue's sending domain for guest email, and showing the owner round. A first client site on your own controller goes live in under an hour, and the CaptiFi device takes about five minutes. If the venue wants paid WiFi, include setting it up: passes pay into the venue's own Stripe account and CaptiFi takes no commission.
4. Decide how hardware is paid for. For a venue with no compatible kit, you order CaptiFi devices from the client's page in the partner dashboard, billed through your partner agreement and tracked by courier. Pass that on as a one-off charge or build it into the monthly fee. A venue buying direct from CaptiFi gets the kit on every plan from Essentials up for a refundable deposit, so that's the comparison an owner may make.
5. Work out the margin as a share of the price. Wikipedia's markup article gives profit margin as (sale price minus cost) divided by sale price, and margin as markup divided by (markup + 1). A 50% markup on a cost of 100 gives a price of 150 and a margin of 33%, which is easy to mistake for half.
6. Round to a figure you can explain on one line of an invoice, and compare it with the public price for the same plan before you send the proposal.

The plan sets the wholesale, so match it to what the venue will use. Essentials covers the branded splash page, contact capture, paid WiFi and vouchers. Review requests and email marketing are on Growth and above, and SMS marketing on Growth and above. Growth adds rewards, the integrations and the weekly and monthly PDF reports, and Pro adds the multi-site dashboard and automation workflows.

Monthly or annual billing

CaptiFi bills a reseller's wholesale monthly through the partner subscription, with a statement emailed on the 1st, so offering a client annual billing is a cash-flow and discount decision on your side. A client who pays a year up front gives you the cash early, and you still pay the wholesale month by month.

Owners who compare will see that CaptiFi's own pricing page offers a lower monthly equivalent on annual billing. Price the year on what you add, such as on-site support and a monthly review with the owner, and set your own annual discount from your monthly price.

Putting guest WiFi inside a managed service contract

If you already sell a managed network contract, guest WiFi can be one more line on it. A per-venue monthly line priced on the plan is easier to renew than a figure buried in the network fee, and it makes extra venues easy to quote. A few CaptiFi details help when you run it as a managed service:

• A client dashboard login is optional. You keep full management access to every client venue from your own login, with a client selector, so you can run a venue on the owner's behalf.
• Suspending a client locks their dashboard logins while their guest WiFi and splash pages keep working, which helps in a billing dispute without taking the venue offline.
• Each client has private notes, up to 500 characters, for contract terms and contacts. The client never sees them.
• CaptiFi has no minimum commitment for resellers, so your contract term with the venue is yours to set.

The white-label minimum works as a floor

White label uses the same wholesale rates as reselling, plus a minimum monthly commitment agreed when you upgrade, and that commitment acts as a floor on your wholesale bill. In any month where your clients' wholesale total is below it, you pay the commitment; once your client base grows past it, you pay the wholesale total and the minimum stops mattering.

The commitment can start on a later date agreed with your account manager, and in its first month it is prorated by the days it covers. Before agreeing a figure, count how many clients cover it: each single-venue Growth client adds $79 to your wholesale total and each Essentials client $45. Start as a reseller, where there's no minimum, and move to white label once your client base covers the floor; the white-label page lists what carries your brand.

The wholesale rate card in six currencies

CaptiFi publishes its partner wholesale rates in GBP, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD and NZD. Rates are monthly, per client plan with the first venue included, plus the rate for each extra venue.

Your account's currency is the one your rate card, statements and payouts use, so when you join, choose the one you invoice your clients in. The MSP programme page shows the public price and margin beside each rate, with a switcher for every currency.

Getting started as a reseller

There's no fee to apply, or to become a referral or reseller partner. Apply online, email partners@captifi.io, or book a 15-minute partner call from the MSP programme page. Approved partners get a free 6-month licence for one internal test venue, for learning and demos only and never for a live client venue, and each client venue is set up on its own account and starts on the standard 30-day trial.

Once clients are live, the deployment checklist covers the install and handover, and proving guest WiFi ROI to your clients covers the monthly review that keeps them renewing at the price you set.

Sources: Wikipedia, Markup (business), read on 22 October 2026; CaptiFi's partner programme pages and customer documentation, October 2026. Prices on this page are CaptiFi's current partner rate card and public prices in USD. Stripe and the other product names here are trade marks of their owners; CaptiFi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.