What hotel WiFi and hotspot management software actually has to do, the seven things worth checking before you buy, and an honest look at where iberry sits among the other providers in this market.
Guest WiFi stopped being "plug in a router" a long time ago. A hotel is running a small public ISP: dozens or hundreds of unknown devices, arriving and leaving every day, sharing one or two internet links, on a network the property is answerable for. Hotel WiFi software is what makes that manageable.
Three things have to work together. A captive portal is the page a guest lands on when they connect. Authentication decides whether this person is entitled to get online - and in a hotel that usually means checking them against the property management system, or handing them a PIN or QR voucher at the desk. Policy and accounting apply the limits and keep the record: how fast each device may go, how much it may use, how long the session lasts, and who was connected when.
That combination is normally described as AAA - authentication, authorization and accounting - and RADIUS is the protocol the network hardware uses to ask for it. Whether you run that yourself or buy it as a service is the first real decision.
These are the questions that separate platforms once the feature lists start looking alike.
Room number and surname from the PMS, a printed PIN or QR voucher, an SMS one-time password, or a free daily allowance. A property with a front desk and a hostel with no reception need different answers, and the software should do more than one of them.
Checking a guest's name against the PMS at login is the easy half. The half that matters is whether access ends automatically at checkout, so a departed guest's device stops using the property's bandwidth.
Speed caps per device, data caps, session time limits and device counts per room. Without these, one guest can consume the whole link and every other room's experience degrades.
Live sessions, per-user usage and connection history. In India this is not only an operational nicety - a hotspot operator is expected to be able to say who was on the network and when.
Some platforms require their own gateway appliance, which sets the floor price and the replacement cost. Others run on standard routers. This is usually the single biggest difference in total cost over five years.
Software you license and host yourself means you patch it, back it up and keep it online. A managed cloud service moves that to the vendor. Check which one you are buying, because the price comparison is meaningless otherwise.
Remote support on a network you cannot reach is not support. Ask whether the vendor can get into the property's router when the guest-facing side has failed, and who does the physical installation and the survey.
Each vendor below is described using the positioning it publishes about itself. Capabilities change, so treat this as a starting point for your own shortlist rather than a scorecard, and confirm the details directly with any provider you are considering.
| Provider | Primary focus | Delivery model | Positioning |
|---|---|---|---|
| iberry | Hotels, resorts, hostels, campuses and offices | Managed cloud service on MikroTik RouterOS hardware | Authentication, captive portal, policy and reporting delivered as one managed service, with installation and support by iberry's own engineers in North India. Guests log in by PIN, QR voucher, SMS OTP or PMS details; access expires at checkout. |
| 24Online | Hotels, ISPs and enterprises | Hotspot billing and bandwidth management software | A long-established Indian vendor that publishes AAA and RADIUS, internet billing and bandwidth management for hotels, and states integration with well-known property management systems. |
| HotSpot Express | Hotels and ISPs | RADIUS AAA, billing and provisioning | An Indian vendor with a dedicated RADIUS server product, describing AAA, billing and provisioning and triple-play billing on its own site. |
| WiJungle | Hospitality, education and enterprise | UTM appliance with hotspot gateway | Positions itself as a UTM-enabled hotel guest WiFi and hotspot gateway with PMS integration, so security and hotspot are bought together as one appliance. |
| Xceednet | Multi-location operators | WiFi hotspot billing and management software | Publishes hotspot business software for India and describes integrating into an existing PMS and network, with customisation per deployment. |
| Start Hotspot | Hotels and hospitality groups, international | Cloud WiFi platform | A cloud hotspot platform with a documented hotel PMS integration, marketed internationally rather than specifically for the Indian market. |
| Antamedia | Hotels and guest internet | Hotel WiFi and guest internet platform | An international vendor publishing customisable guest access controls and support for integration with hotel PMS systems. |
iberry is operated as a service. The authentication, portal, policy and reporting run in the iberry cloud and each property's router connects to it over an encrypted WireGuard tunnel. There is no server for the hotel to host, patch or back up.
The platform runs on standard MikroTik RouterOS equipment rather than a proprietary appliance, so the hardware is widely available and replaceable rather than tied to one vendor's product line.
PMS login by room and surname, PIN and QR vouchers for walk-ins and events, SMS OTP where a verified number is wanted, and automatic expiry at checkout - because the point of the PMS link is that nobody has to remember to switch a guest off.
A group manages every property from one dashboard, with per-property policies and usage reporting, rather than logging into each site's router separately.
Multi-ISP failover and load balancing keep the hotspot serving guests when one connection fails, instead of the whole property going dark until someone calls the provider.
Survey, installation and ongoing support are done by iberry's own team across North India, and the cloud tunnel means the router can be reached even when the guest-facing side of the network has failed.
Hotel WiFi software controls who can use a property's wireless network, on what terms, and records the usage. In practice it is three things working together: a captive portal the guest sees when they connect, an authentication system that checks they are entitled to access, and policy and reporting that apply limits and keep a record.
Usually yes, in some form. RADIUS is the protocol most WiFi and router hardware uses to ask an external system whether a login is valid and what limits to apply. You do not necessarily have to run the RADIUS server yourself - with a managed service like iberry the RADIUS side is operated in the cloud and the property just runs the router.
The guest enters their room number and surname on the captive portal, and the WiFi platform checks that pair against the property management system. If the room is occupied by that guest, they are let online. The same link is what allows access to expire automatically at checkout rather than staying open until someone remembers to revoke it.
iberry's published plans start at ₹30,000 one-time for a 30-40 room property, ₹50,000 for 40-60 rooms and ₹99,000 for large and five-star properties, each with ₹12,000 yearly maintenance. Across the market, the figure that varies most is whether a proprietary gateway appliance is required, because that sets both the entry price and the cost of replacing it later.
In the Indian hotel market the commonly considered alternatives include iberry, HotSpot Express, WiJungle and Xceednet, with Start Hotspot and Antamedia as international options. The practical question when comparing them is whether you want licensed software you host, an appliance you buy, or a managed cloud service - those are three different purchases, and the sticker prices are not comparable.
Yes. iberry applies per-user download and upload caps, data volume caps, session time limits and per-room device counts, so one guest cannot consume the whole connection. Per-user limits of this kind are a standard capability to look for in any platform you evaluate.
Tell us the property size, how guests should log in and what is already installed, and we will tell you plainly whether iberry is the right fit. See pricing, cloud AAA and managed WiFi.
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