Meet Encapto, Our Captive Portal Wi-Fi Solution

What is Encapto?

Encapto is a cloud-hosted service that provides user engagement, reporting, and control for your guest Wi-Fi networks. It is a flexible external captive portal solution that integrates natively with many vendors.

• Cloud hosted – Encapto Clouddeck is the main dashboard from where the Encapto platform is accessed, configured and controlled. It is hosted in Azure in multiple locations worldwide for minimal latency.
• Uses WISPr hotspot – Encapto integrates with WLAN controllers via the use of the WISPr hotspot redirection functionality of enterprise WLAN networks. WISPr redirects unauthenticated Wi-Fi traffic to the Encapto captive web portal which is externally hosted.
• Uses RADIUS for authentication – once the traffic has been redirected to the externally hosted Encapto portal, is it then authenticated via the use of RADIUS – with Encapto acting as an externally hosted RADIUS server.
• Vendor interoperability – Encapto natively integrates with the following WLAN vendors: Cisco Meraki, Mikrotik, Ruckus vSZ, Ruckus ZD, Cambium cnPilot, LANCOM, CoovaChilli, Mojo. However, do not worry if your WLAN vendor is not on this list! Encapto can be used with other WLAN vendors via the use of a MikroTik router as a RADIUS proxy.

What can it do?

Encapto provides a user engagement piece in the form of a captive portal, that allows guest Wi-Fi users to join a wireless network. Encapto allows the network provider to capture data provided by the guest users via various methods; this data can then be used for marketing. Encapto also has a full reporting & dashboard suite that gives the network operator full control of their guest Wi-Fi network.

• Encapto captive portals can provide guest Wi-Fi login via the following methods for client ease of use: click-through (accept T’s & Cs), user email registration, social media login (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Weibo, Microsoft ID), passphrase, voucher code, and payment gateway (Advam, Authorizenet, BAC, Braintree PayPal, PesaPal, Stripe).
• Data captured from the Wi-Fi log-in process can then be logged and exported for use by the network operator’s marketing team.
• Marketing data can then be used to create advertising campaigns within the Encapto system, and these campaigns can be directed at your guest Wi-Fi users prior to logging into the network via the captive portal.

Marketing

Encapto features a host of data capture & marketing elements:

• Surveys are a great way to gather further customer information. Encapto surveys fields are fully customisable and data entry is stored in the reporting element. Surveys can be assigned to captive portals and can be shown before a user is able to log in with optional or mandatory fields for the user to fill in prior to accessing the network.
• Encapto allows you to create campaigns that can be shown before the captive portal login appears – this can be used for advertising. Advertising campaigns are fully customisable and can be shown at specific times and multiple campaigns can be run simultaneously. Content in each campaign can be tailored for PCs and mobile devices independently.

Reporting

Encapto provides a comprehensive reporting and analytics engine that features the following data sets and can be viewed in the reporting pages and exported to .csv file:

• Device type, OS, mac address, user email addresses and names
• Browser versions
• Time online
• Data used & websites visited
• New/return users
• Reports can be used to gather data for marketing purposes
• Reports can be used to help determine how the network is running

Reporting data can be used to provide insight into how the network is operating, how much bandwidth is being used by the clients, whether any restrictions need to be implemented and much more. The reports can be viewed on Encapto dashboard in graphical format or can be downloaded in .csv format for further analysis.

Author:  Harry Drewett (Wireless Solutions Engineer at Purdicom)

We hope you’ve found this post useful and informative. For more information on anything related to Encapto, please contact us on +44 (0) 333 1212 100 or email sales@purdi.com