Straight answers to real questions.

For a single-site venue with an existing fibre line, installation is usually a half-day. We handle the portal configuration, the captive portal DNS, and any WiFi access point setup. You can be live by the end of the day.

Usually no. If you already have decent access points (UniFi, MikroTik, TP-Link Omada, Aruba, etc.), we can deploy the captive portal on top of them. If your hardware is tired or unreliable, we supply replacement equipment at cost.

We'll do a quick feasibility check first. If your line is underperforming, we can recommend an upgrade path before we deploy anything. No point putting lipstick on a broken uplink.

You need us ongoing for the software subscription (the portal, the Review Router, the AI Concierge — all run on our cloud). Day-to-day operation, though, is all on your side: your staff manage vouchers, read reports, respond to WhatsApp alerts.

Yes. Google's guideline forbids review gating — preventing unhappy guests from posting publicly. We don't do that. Every guest is free to post a review anywhere they like. What we do is give happy guests an easy public path (Google) and unhappy guests a private one first (the manager). They can still post publicly afterwards.

It happens occasionally — usually because something went wrong after they clicked the 5-star button. The dashboard flags these mismatches so you can investigate. Rare in practice.

Managers see aggregated ratings by table and time, plus the text of low-rating complaints so they can recover. We don't show individual guest names unless the guest opted in to marketing.

We build integrations per venue. We're actively developing connectors for Pilot, GAAP, and Lightspeed. If your POS has a documented API or webhook, we can plug in — give us the details and we'll scope it. If it doesn't, we can do a print-to-ticket fallback that routes to your bar printer.

Yes. We ingest your current menu, wine list, and specials. The AI only recommends things you actually sell. If you change prices or run out of an item, you update it in one dashboard and the AI adjusts immediately.

The AI handles common allergen and dietary questions (vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, halaal, kosher) based on what you've tagged. For anything it's unsure about, it hands the conversation gracefully back to a human waiter instead of guessing.

Essentials R499/month per location, Reputation R1,499/month per location, Reputation + AI Concierge from R3,499/month per location. Add-ons (hardware, installation, WiFi in Motion, community projects) are priced separately. See our packages page for details.

No 24-month lock-ins. Most customers start on a month-to-month and pay only for the hardware and installation up front. You can cancel the software subscription with one month's notice.

Yes. From 3 locations onwards, volume pricing kicks in. Speak to us — the more sites you run, the more cost-effective the Reputation + AI Concierge tier becomes.

Yes. We follow least-data-collected practices, capture explicit consent at login, and keep guest data hosted in South Africa or compliant cloud regions. You remain the data controller for your guests; Hotwireless is the processor. We're registered with the Information Regulator.

You do. Every email, phone number, and review from your venue is exportable to your CRM on demand. If you ever leave us, the data goes with you.

By default we keep connection logs for 12 months (required for regulatory purposes), and any marketing contact data for as long as consent is valid. Guests can request deletion at any time.

No. We're based in Cape Town (Constantia) but operate nationally. We have venues in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and beyond. For remote installs we partner with local installers.

Essentials includes email support. Reputation adds WhatsApp support. Reputation + AI Concierge includes a dedicated account manager and phone support with an SLA. We also monitor your portal 24/7 — if it goes down, we usually know before you do.