Guest WiFi for bars and pubs that is family-safe when families are in
At lunchtime your pub serves families, and by ten it serves a crowd following the match on their phones. Shield runs a family-safe policy on the guest WiFi in family hours and a lighter one later, set by time of day for each venue. Ads are stripped so pages load faster. Your ePOS, digital jukebox and office PC run on threat-first rules behind it.
- Staff and head officeThreat defence firstOffice LAN and staff WiFi, by directory group
- Guest WiFiStrict, family-safeVisitors and customers, nothing to installGuest network tiersFree WiFiAd blocking on, streaming limited at busy timesPaid WiFiIts own rules, separate from the free tier
- IoT and branchesLocked downTills, cameras and sensors behind a relay
Schedule, per site
What is at stake
Families at lunch, a different crowd at night
Adult content in a public room
A screen turned the wrong way in a busy bar puts your venue's name in the complaint, not the guest's.Match-day load
When the match is on, hundreds of phones stream at once, and ads and trackers take a share of the line.Kit nobody watches
Card terminals, digital jukeboxes, CCTV recorders and the office PC stay online overnight, and an infected device can call home unnoticed.
How Shield fits
Rules that change with the time of day
- Guest WiFi, family hoursFamily-safe categories and Safe Search until the time you set, with ads stripped for faster pages.
- Guest WiFi, eveningsA lighter content policy later on, with phishing, malware and adult content still blocked.
- ePOS and card terminalsThreat-first rules on their own VLAN, with domains registered in the last 30 days blocked.
- Office and staffPhishing and ransomware blocked on the office PC, with social media off for staff during service.
See everything Shield stopsHospitality WiFi on Purple Access
Guest WiFi policy
- Adult contentBlocked
- GamblingBlocked
- Safe Search on Google, Bing and YouTubeEnforced
- Streaming at busy timesLimited
Allow list
bookings.examplemenu.exampleBlock list
rival-venue.exampleProof
Family-safe by standards UK venues already know
- 500%
- faster page loads, once ads and trackers are stripped out
- 80,000+
- venues in 90 countries run WiFi on the Purple platform
- Friendly WiFistandard met by Shield's filtering for family-safe public WiFi
- IWFbar met by Shield's filtering, set by the Internet Watch Foundation
FAQ
Questions we hear from teams like yours
Can the guest WiFi change its rules at a set time?
Yes. Policies run by time of day and day of week, per venue. You can keep the guest network family-safe until 9pm on weekdays and later at weekends, then apply a lighter policy, with threats and adult content blocked throughout.
Will streaming the match be slower with Shield on?
No. Shield answers the lookup each phone makes anyway, then strips ads and trackers before they load. Purple's own measurements show page loads up to 500% faster and up to 44% less data used, which leaves more of the line for the match.
Do we need new equipment in each pub?
No. You point the pub's router, firewall or DHCP at Shield, so there is no hardware to fit and nothing for guests to install. A managed pub group can roll it out to all its venues from one dashboard.
Can guests bypass the filter with a VPN app?
You can block VPN and proxy apps in one click on the guest network, which closes the usual route round a family-safe policy. Staff and managers keep their own SSID, with its own rules and its own allow list.
What happens if Shield goes down on a Saturday night?
Shield runs on a dual anycast DNS network, so if one node or network fails, the next one answers. It also fails closed, so an outage never leaves your guest WiFi or ePOS network unfiltered. Your guest WiFi is never left open on your busiest night.
Other industries
Hotels
Family-safe guest WiFi in each room, with the front desk and building systems on threat-first rules.Restaurants
Family-safe diner WiFi, with pay-at-table terminals and ordering tablets on threat-first rules.Quick-service restaurants
Family-safe customer WiFi, with kitchen screens, kiosks and drive-thru tablets on threat-first rules.
Decide what your network reaches, free for 30 days
Tell us which networks and sites you run and who is on them. We map a policy to each one: staff, guests, students, residents and IoT. Then point one network at Shield and see what it stops for 30 days, before you pay anything. Running change control? We plan a pilot on one site with your team instead. No hardware to install.
- We map your networksA Purple expert maps your networks, your venues and the people on each, and answers your questions on bypass, outages, data handling and integrations.
- You get a policy for each oneStaff, guests, students, residents, IoT and paid tiers, each with the policy it needs.
- You prove it, then get your tailored quote30 days free on one network, or a pilot on one site planned with your team, then Shield priced standalone or as an add-on to your Access plan.
Your policy map
Tell us your networks. We map a policy to each one.
A Purple expert comes back with a policy for every network and group you run, from the team that has run content filtering since 2012 and runs WiFi for 80,000+ venues in 90 countries.