Best WiFi marketing for Airbnb and short-term rentals 2026

Most new short-term rental hosts work this out about eighteen months in. You've hosted maybe 200 guests, every one of them stayed in your property, ate your welcome snacks and used your guidebook, and you can't email a single one of them. Airbnb gave you a masked alias address for the booker and nothing for the three other people who actually slept there. The platform owns the relationship. You own the cleaning bill.

WiFi marketing is the workaround a lot of professional hosts now treat as standard kit. Every guest connects to the rental's WiFi at some point, usually within minutes of arriving. If the sign-in screen asks for a name, email and phone number before granting access, you capture the whole party, not only whoever clicked "book". Over a year that's a mailing list of people who've stayed with you and might come back directly, without the commission.

This round-up compares four options an Airbnb or holiday-let host will come across. StayFi comes first because it's the one built for short-term rentals. CaptiFi, which is our product, is next, followed by two hospitality platforms that hosts also look at, Stampede and Adentro (formerly Zenreach). Everything we say about the other three comes from their own websites, checked on 27 and 28 Oct 2026, and we've left review-site ratings out.

Why short-term rental hosts need this

Airbnb and Vrbo are very good at filling calendars, and they aren't set up to hand you the guest relationship. The commission model depends on the guest coming back through the platform. A direct rebooking saves the platform's fee and, depending on the listing, can put noticeably more margin in your pocket. The Airbnb and short-term rental page walks through how hosts set capture up for exactly this.

WiFi capture matters more for rentals than for a cafe because of the booker problem. In a four-person stay, the booking platform shares one contact, and that contact is often masked. The other three guests are invisible to you. A splash page that collects details from each device reaches the whole group, which is why StayFi says it "captures the information from every guest, not just the booker".

What matters for an Airbnb host

The buying criteria for a rental host are different from a restaurant owner's. Before comparing products, get clear on these.

• Capture from every guest. The point is the whole party; a tool that only grabs one email per stay barely beats what Airbnb already gives you.
• How it's priced. Platforms here charge per property, per venue or per WiFi device, so a host with one cottage and a host with forty cabins have very different sums to do.
• Remote reliability. You aren't on site, so you want an alert when the WiFi drops, before a guest complains about the broadband.
• A direct-booking push. The page after sign-in is a marketing surface, and sending guests to your own booking site and guidebook is where the commission saving starts.
• Setup a non-technical host can manage. Most hosts aren't network engineers, so plug-and-play matters.

StayFi

StayFi was founded in 2018, is based in New York, and says more than 80,000 short-term rentals in 70+ countries use it. It's built around the booker problem above: branded WiFi splash pages that capture details from every guest, then email and text marketing to bring them back directly. Its HomePage feature includes digital guidebooks that guests are forwarded to after they log in to the WiFi, and its integrations page lists free upsell integrations with The Host Co. and Viator.

Pricing starts at $19 a month, pay as you go, and is billed by the number of WiFi devices (on a UniFi network, each access point counts) and email contacts, with email marketing free up to 200 contacts. Texts are bought as credits, from $0.0425 a credit for small bundles down to $0.0175 at 100,000+, with a UK text using two credits. Hardware is published too: StayFi works on an existing UniFi or Ruckus network with no new hardware, or its StayFi Express device ($99) adds a branded portal to eero, Deco, Omada or Aruba systems, and its own Aginet units run from $139 to $284. Its integrations page lists rental PMSs such as OwnerRez, Guesty, Hostaway and Hospitable, and its text marketing screens for 5-star reviews and sends those guests to Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor or your own website. Our StayFi review and the StayFi alternatives page go further.

CaptiFi

CaptiFi is a guest WiFi marketing platform for venues of all kinds, and that tells you who it suits among hosts. If you run a couple of Airbnb listings alongside a cafe, a pub, a small hotel or a holiday park, you can manage capture for all of them in one dashboard instead of running a rental-only product next to a venue product.

It runs on access points you may already own, with setup guides for 9 vendor ecosystems (TP-Link Omada, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cisco Meraki, Aruba Instant On, MikroTik, Ruckus, Fortinet FortiGate/FortiAP, DrayTek and Cisco Catalyst), or on the CaptiFi device, which comes with every plan on a refundable deposit of $99. So a host with a UniFi mesh already wired into the cottage doesn't have to buy new kit. Lite, at $24.99/mo, keeps the guest list for one property. Essentials is $69/mo with one property included, each extra one is $35 a month, and every plan starts with a 30-day trial (you add a card to start). The login page asks for marketing consent separately from getting online, and guests who opt in get an automated welcome flow. In CaptiFi's own venue data, 55% of the new devices that joined CaptiFi guest WiFi in September 2026 signed in, and a typical venue gained around 50 new guest emails a month from April to September.

What it doesn't do: CaptiFi has no PMS integration, so it doesn't connect to OwnerRez, Guesty or Hostaway the way a large portfolio manager might want, and it doesn't sell a range of rental routers. If you only run rentals, StayFi's focus may fit you better. See CaptiFi vs StayFi for the side by side, read about guest WiFi for the technical setup, or start a 30-day trial on one listing.

Stampede

Stampede, an Edinburgh company founded in 2015, sells guest WiFi as one part of a hospitality platform with ordering, bookings, payments, marketing, loyalty and reviews, and says it's used in more than 2,500 UK venues. A self-catering cottage has little use for table bookings or ordering, but if your "short-term rental" is really a few rooms above a pub you also run, having WiFi capture, bookings and loyalty in one system starts to make sense.

Stampede doesn't publish a price: its pricing page describes one flat price per venue, sized on a 30-minute call, and its referral page says a referred business starts a free trial of the full platform. Its WiFi runs on SNAPguard, a pre-configured MikroTik box; Stampede's documentation says it's included by default and is not an optional add-on, so ask what the box costs when you get your price. Our Stampede review and the CaptiFi vs Stampede comparison go deeper.

Adentro (formerly Zenreach)

Hosts still search for Zenreach, whose website now redirects to Adentro. Adentro was founded in 2012, is headquartered in San Francisco, and is aimed at businesses with walk-in customers ("Turn walk-ins into regulars"), with customers such as Peet's Coffee and Bowlero shown on its home page. Its main measure, Walk-Through Rate, is the share of people who saw an ad and were later seen visiting a participating location.

Its plans start at $25 a month, and it says it works with your existing access points, Cisco and Meraki included, through a remote configuration change. Its website offers a demo and plans sold through Verizon's marketplace, with no free trial mentioned. Ad attribution of this kind is built for venues advertising to local footfall, which is a different job from marketing a self-catering rental. See the Zenreach review for more.

The comparison table

Each competitor cell comes from that company's own website, checked on 27 and 28 Oct 2026. Where a figure isn't published, the table says so.

Which fits which host

Single-listing host with one cottage or flat

If this is your only property and it's a pure rental, StayFi is the obvious first look: it was built for this, starts at $19 a month, and runs on an existing UniFi or Ruckus network or its own $99 Express device. CaptiFi is worth a look too if you'd like to try it on the router you already have, with a 30-day trial and Essentials at $69/mo.

Portfolio manager with 20-plus listings

Here the rental integrations matter. StayFi's PMS connections (OwnerRez, Guesty, Hostaway, Hospitable) and its per-device pricing are designed for portfolios, and its text credits get cheaper at volume. Work out the device and contact charges for your portfolio before you commit. If your portfolio also includes serviced apartments attached to a venue you run, CaptiFi manages different property types in one dashboard, with a published price for each extra site.

Mixed hospitality host (rental plus a cafe, pub or hotel)

This is the clearest case for CaptiFi, because you'd otherwise run a rental-only tool next to a separate venue tool. Capture for the cottage and the cafe sits in one place, on hardware you may already own, with one price list. Stampede is the alternative if the "rental" is really rooms above a venue and you want bookings, payments and loyalty in the same system; it quotes its price on a call. The hotels guide covers the overlap if your rooms behave more like a small hotel.

Getting started without the headaches

Whichever platform you choose, setup follows the same pattern. Get a captive portal running on the rental's WiFi, design a branded splash page that asks for name, email and phone, then connect it to an email tool so the welcome message and rebooking offers send automatically. We walk through it in how to capture emails from guest WiFi and the broader WiFi marketing overview.

The decision that splits these tools is hardware. StayFi runs on existing UniFi or Ruckus or adds its own device, Stampede runs every set-up through its SNAPguard box, Adentro configures your existing access points remotely, and CaptiFi runs on supported access points or on its own device, which comes with a refundable deposit. If you want to weigh CaptiFi against the wider field first, the guest WiFi marketing platforms overview covers more options, and why CaptiFi sets out what it does and doesn't do.

Competitor details are from each company's own website, checked on 27 and 28 Oct 2026; prices and plans change, so check them on the day you buy. Sources: StayFi, Pricing, Guest data collection, Existing Ubiquiti users, Existing Ruckus users, Integrations, Text marketing and About; Stampede, Pricing, Referrals, Guest WiFi, SNAPguard and company facts; Adentro, home page, Pricing, Company info and Walk-through attribution. CaptiFi figures are from its own venue data and are not guarantees. Product names are trade marks of their owners; CaptiFi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.