Frequently asked questions

About 20 minutes if you already have a UniFi controller. Sign up → click "Sign in with Planning Center" → walk through the 3-screen UniFi config wizard → brand your splash → you're live. Buy the hardware bundle ($399) for a plug-and-play option that takes 5 minutes total.

For BYO-router setup, you need to be comfortable logging into a UniFi controller and creating a user. We give you step-by-step screenshots in the dashboard wizard. If that's not you, the hardware bundle skips all of it — plug in, scan a QR sticker, done.

UniFi is fully supported today (every Dream Machine, UDR/UDM/UDM-Pro/UDM-SE/UDM-Max, UXG, UniFi Express, UniFi Cloud Gateway). Aruba Instant On, Cisco Meraki, OpenWRT, TP-Link Omada, and Mikrotik are on the roadmap — tell us which one your church runs.

Yes. Our captive portal is intentionally built without JavaScript so the iOS Captive Network Assistant (the popup that appears when you join a public Wi-Fi) can render and dismiss it reliably. We test against every iOS release. Same for Android, Windows, and macOS.

One-click OAuth. When a teammate clicks "Sign in with Planning Center" in our dashboard, you grant ChurchPortalKit read+write access to the People product (only). When a guest connects to your Wi-Fi and submits the check-in form, we look up their email in PCO; if no match, we create a Person and tag the note with the SSID + service date. We never touch Giving, Services, Check-Ins, or Groups data.

Guests still get internet immediately — we don't make their connection wait on PCO. If the API is slow or returning errors, we queue the sync and retry with exponential backoff (30s / 2m / 10m / 1h, plus a 10-minute sweeper for anything still pending). The visit shows up in your dashboard with status "pending" or "error" until it syncs.

Not yet — we sync to PCO People only, with a Note tagging the visit. PCO Check-Ins integration is on the roadmap; it's more nuanced because Check-Ins is per-event, not per-person, so we want to make sure the UX of "I checked into ChurchPortalKit's portal, do I also need to check into a Check-Ins station?" doesn't confuse families.

Everything on the plan you pick. No card charged during the trial. We collect payment info up-front so the service doesn't lapse on day 31 — you can cancel any time before then and you owe nothing.

Standard ($39/mo). Up to 2 sites, 3 SSIDs, unlimited guests, weekly email reports, custom domain, day-of-week portal rules. The most common churn signal we see when we recommend Starter to mid-size churches is "we hit 200 guests/mo in one Sunday and now what?" — Standard removes that limit.

Yes, one click in /dashboard/billing. Stripe prorates the difference on your next invoice — no immediate charge, no math on your end.

$399 buys a UniFi Express we've pre-configured for your church + your first year of Standard ($390). The hardware works out to roughly $9 — loss-leader pricing for adoption. Year 2 onward you pay normal Standard ($39/mo).

Skip the hardware bundle. Subscribe to a software-only plan and connect your existing UniFi controller — the dashboard walks you through enabling External Portal on your guest SSID. Takes 5 minutes if you have UniFi admin credentials.

Your church does. We're the processor; you're the controller. We don't sell, share, or train on it. Full details in our Privacy policy.

By default, 365 days. You can shorten that under Branding settings to comply with your congregation's preference. After the window, visits are dropped from active storage and backups within 30 days.

They should email your church. You can filter /dashboard/visits by their email, see what's on file, and remove it. We're working on a one-click "delete this guest" action in v0.2 — for now, contact support.

AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest with a server-side key. We never log them, never display them, never let one tenant see another's. The encrypted blob is opened in-memory only when we need to authorize a guest device.

That’s the scenario ChurchPortalKit was first built for — two congregations, one building, one router. Each church keeps its own account, branding, Planning Center connection, and analytics; a day-and-time schedule on the shared SSID decides which church’s portal a guest sees, and every visit lands in the right church’s dashboard. Configure it under Sites → your SSID → shared-building schedule.

Yes — the day-of-week rules let you say "Sunday + Tuesday → full check-in form; every other day → simple connect (no data captured)". JSON config in the SSID settings; zero-code.

Standard plan and above. Every Monday morning at 6am PT we email everyone on your team list with last week's check-in numbers (total / first-time / returning / PCO sync rate). It only sends if you had at least one visit that week — no zero-state spam.

We target 99.9% monthly. Our portal renders are fast — typically under 200ms cold and we don't make the guest's connection wait on Planning Center. See the Terms for the full SLA framing.