MikroTik Hotspot Email Capture

MikroTik turns up in a lot of pubs, cafes and small hotels, usually where a local engineer did the install. RouterOS ships with a built-in hotspot. What it doesn't ship with is a marketing system. If you want to capture customer emails from your MikroTik guest WiFi and turn them into repeat visits, this walkthrough shows you how.

What the RouterOS hotspot does

The RouterOS hotspot intercepts unauthenticated clients and presents a login page (the familiar login.html served from the router's hotspot directory). You can edit those HTML files, set up user profiles, apply bandwidth limits, and authenticate against local users or a RADIUS server. It keeps user accounting too, in a local database on the router or on a RADIUS server.

How many guests can be logged in at once depends on the RouterOS licence level. MikroTik's licence table lists 1 active HotSpot user at level 3, 200 at level 4, 500 at level 5 and unlimited at level 6, and prices levels 4, 5 and 6 at $45, $95 and $250. Check which level your router has before you plan a busy venue around it.

For email-led marketing, here's what you'd be building yourself:

• MikroTik describes the hotspot as a gateway that authenticates clients before they reach the internet; its documentation doesn't cover building a marketing list to export and campaign to.
• Editing login.html to collect an address doesn't send a welcome email, an offer or a review request on its own. A hotspot user profile can run a script when a user logs in or out (the on-login and on-logout settings), so any sending would be a script and a mail service you write and run yourself.
• Review requests aren't covered either. The hotspot's user accounting tracks sessions and usage, on the router or a RADIUS server.
• UK GDPR consent capture and retention records are entirely on you to build into the page and a backend.

You can hand-roll a form into login.html that posts an email somewhere, but you are then building and maintaining a backend, an email platform integration and a consent store yourself. That is a project, not a setting.

Why route to an external portal

The cleaner approach keeps RouterOS doing the part it is good at (intercepting and authorising clients) and hands the splash experience to a dedicated external captive portal. The hotspot redirects guests to the portal URL, the portal handles the branded page, email capture, consent and follow-ups, then authorises the client back through MikroTik. You skip the custom backend entirely.

RouterOS hotspot walkthrough

1. Run the hotspot setup. In WinBox or WebFig, go to IP, then Hotspot, and run the Hotspot Setup wizard against your guest bridge or interface. This creates the hotspot server, address pool and walled-garden basics.
2. Get your portal details from support. There is no self-serve MikroTik path in the CaptiFi set-up wizard. Email support@captifi.io with your venue name, and support sends the portal login URL to set on the hotspot server profile's Login tab in place of the stock login.html.
3. Set the walled garden. Add *.captifi.io, app.captifi.io, fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com under IP, Hotspot, Walled Garden, and CaptiFi's server IP 46.62.168.7 to the Walled Garden IP List, so the branded splash and its resources load before the guest is authorised.
4. Let support finish the CaptiFi side. Support provides any authentication credentials your setup needs, configures the CaptiFi side, and confirms session lengths and any devices that should bypass the portal, such as card machines.
5. Test from a phone. Join the guest network, confirm the redirect to your branded page, submit a test email, and check it lands in your dashboard.

For the full screen-by-screen RouterOS configuration with the exact settings, see the dedicated MikroTik setup guide. CaptiFi works across the RouterOS range including hAP, hEX and CCR devices.

What the external portal adds

Once it is live, every guest who signs in and opts in joins your list, and the follow-ups run automatically. For the marketing side, see guest email marketing and automating Google reviews.

Getting UK GDPR right

Because the external portal owns the form, it is the right place to do consent properly: a marketing opt-in kept separate from getting onto the WiFi and never pre-ticked, so the guest actively opts in, a linked privacy notice, and a record of when and how consent was given, plus a defined retention period for inactive contacts. Our GDPR-compliant guest WiFi guide covers the five essentials, and the GDPR compliance feature shows how CaptiFi handles consent and erasure requests.

If you only want guest capture and CSV export on the kit you already run, Lite is $24.99/mo for one site. Start Lite.

Not on MikroTik? The same external-portal approach works on UniFi, Omada and Meraki. Otherwise, start a 30-day trial (you add a card to start) and email support@captifi.io for your portal details.

Sources: MikroTik, HotSpot, captive portal and RouterOS license keys, both read on 28 October 2026. MikroTik, RouterOS and the other product names here are trade marks of their owners; CaptiFi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.