We're a big company in the UK, running 50+ hotspot locations.

When we started we had a big important question: develop and use our own system, or find a company who we can work with.

There were several advantages/disadvantages with both, and we ended up using a hosted solution with a company who is DEDICATED to operate a hotspot system. Why? This is simple:

- They operate the whole system, they have the infrasructure, have backup servers, etc. (we haven't had a downtime for 2 years!)

- As we are a company who does lots of things, we needed a company who can make support for us if something is wrong. Everyone forget about the support here and if you have your own system you have to do the support for yourself!!!

- You need a merchant account if you want to use credit card billing. By using a parnter company we don't need a merchant account, we can forget the hassle with refunds, chargebacks, payment problems, etc. For those who use a PayPal only solution i have one comment: Based on the customers country, the credit card history and the purchase amount, PayPal requires users to register a PayPal account before their purchases. Furthermore PayPal may ask users to VERIFY their accont BEFORE they are able to pay. Users have to wait for their bank statement to complete the verification process which prevents them to buy a HotSpot access at your location at the moment they wanted to. This means they cannot use your HotSpot and you may loose money.

All of these are included in that 20% we are paying to this company (they pay out 70% originally but if you can generate more traffic then it can be up to 80%). We would definitely pay more if we operated our own web and radius servers, paid for the credit card company for the transactions, and did all the support.

For us, it is a winning situation.

The company called Hotspot System, i can hardly suggest them to all who want to start their own hotspot business. Operating your own system - if you are not dedicated with that - doesn't worth the hassle.