Small Business WiFi: How to Get It Right in a Shop, Café, Salon or Office
Three networks, access points on the ceiling, a cable to the till. What it costs in Sussex.
Good small business WiFi is three separate networks (tills, staff, guests) served by one or two access points on the ceiling, a cable rather than WiFi to the till and printer, and a 4G or 5G backup if the card machine must never stop. For a small shop or salon that is usually £600 to £1,200 installed.
In short
- The broadband provider's free router was built for a house, which is why the WiFi dies at the front of the shop.
- Separate networks (VLANs) for tills, staff and guests mean a customer on the guest WiFi cannot see the till, the printer or your laptop.
- One ceiling access point covers roughly 100 to 150 square metres of open floor; brick walls or a back office usually mean a second. The till, printer and any camera go on a cable.
- A UniFi gateway and one or two access points fitted in a small shop is typically £600 to £1,200; with cabling and 4G failover a larger premises runs £1,500 to £3,000.
Why the broadband router in the back room is the problem
Nearly every small premises we visit runs on the hub the broadband provider posted out, on a shelf in the stock room. It was designed for a three-bed semi: one radio reaching the front door through stock and a brick wall, every device treated the same, no way to tell your till from a stranger's phone. Hence the card machine timing out on a Saturday afternoon, the music dropping when the café fills up, and the WiFi password on a Post-it by the till. A dearer home router fixes none of that; putting the radio where the people are, separating the networks and cabling the things that earn money does.
Three networks, not one: tills, staff and guests
A business network should be split into at least three VLANs: in plain English, three WiFi names with three sets of rules on the same cables and access points.
- Tills and payments. The till, the card terminal or its base, the receipt printer and the back-office PC. Nothing else joins and nothing from the other two can see in, which is what the card scheme rules (PCI DSS) expect.
- Staff. Phones, the order tablet, the accounts laptop. Internet and the printer, not the till.
- Guests. Customers' phones. Internet only, speed-capped, and isolated from each other and from you.
It costs nothing extra once the right gateway is in; our UniFi network setup guide shows the same split in a house.
Guest WiFi: a simple password or a captive portal
For a salon or small shop, a short guest password on a printed card, changed every few months, is enough. For a café, pub or holiday let, a captive portal is better: the page that appears when you join, asks you to accept terms and lets you on for a few hours, keeping the password off the counter. Either way, cap each guest at 10 to 20 Mbps, plenty for a map or a photo.
Access points on the ceiling, cables to the till
A PoE access point is a flat disc on the ceiling, fed by one Ethernet cable carrying data and power from a small switch by the router. In the open, where the customers are, it gives a far stronger signal than a router behind a door. One covers roughly 100 to 150 square metres of open floor; add another for each brick wall, a first floor or a back office. A high-street shop usually needs one, a café with a back room and outside seating two.
Then cable everything that should never be on WiFi: the till and card terminal base, the printers, the back-office PC and any CCTV camera, which runs on the same PoE cabling on its own VLAN. Do not reach for mesh or extenders here: they relay over the air and have no proper VLANs (see mesh WiFi vs extenders).
Keeping the card machine alive: failover and business lines
If a lost connection means no payments, a 4G or 5G failover router is the cheapest insurance you will buy. It sits beside the gateway with a data SIM, takes over within seconds when the line drops and hands back when it returns; nobody notices. The plan is typically £10 to £20 a month, most months carries nothing, and one Saturday outage pays for it.
A residential line is cheaper, but support works office hours and a fault can take days. A business line brings a repair promise, weekend support and usually a static IP address, useful for viewing cameras or the till from home.
What small business WiFi costs
What we quote across Sussex at the time of writing, for UniFi kit supplied, fitted and set up with the three networks. The spread in each row is mostly cabling.
| Premises | What it usually needs | Typical installed cost |
|---|---|---|
| Small shop or salon, up to about 100 sq m | Gateway, one ceiling access point, cabled till and printer, guest password | £600 to £1,000 |
| Café, restaurant or pub, 100 to 250 sq m | Gateway, two access points (one for outside), captive portal, cabled till | £900 to £1,500 |
| Small office, 5 to 15 desks | Gateway, PoE switch, two access points, cabled desks and printer, remote access | £1,200 to £2,000 |
| Workshop or unit with brick walls or a yard | Two or three access points including an outdoor unit, longer cable runs, cameras on the same cabling | £1,500 to £2,500 |
| Holiday let or B&B | Gateway, one or two access points, guest portal, remote monitoring | £600 to £1,200 |
| Add 4G/5G failover to any row | Failover router and SIM, set to take over automatically | Add £200 to £400, plus the data plan |
Cabling, failover and more than two access points together tend to land between £1,500 and £3,000. The survey is free, the quote is fixed and the installation carries a 12-month workmanship warranty. The business WiFi page has the detail; the business hub covers the rest.
Four mistakes we see in nearly every premises
The WiFi password on the counter. Anyone walking past can read it, and it is nearly always the one network the till is on.
The printer on the guest network. Anyone in the queue can print to it, and it is a stepping stone to whatever else is reachable.
Extenders daisy-chained through the building. Each halves the speed of the last; by the third the card machine is slower than dial-up.
Card machines on a congested 2.4 GHz band. Many terminals default to it and fight thirty customer phones for airtime; cable the base, or use the tills network on 5 GHz.
Remote monitoring: faults seen before you notice them
The other reason we fit UniFi for businesses is that we can see it. Every gateway and access point reports to a management console, so when an access point goes offline, the broadband drops or the failover kicks in at 3am, we know, and usually fix it before anyone arrives to open up. That is remote monitoring: not someone watching your traffic, but the kit telling us when it is unwell. We offer it on every UniFi business system we fit. For a single weak corner, our guide to improving your WiFi signal has the free fixes.
If any of your kit still plugs into a phone socket, read our note on the landline switch-off on 31 January 2027: alarm diallers, card terminals and lift lines are the usual casualties.
Running a shop, café, salon or office on the broadband hub?
We will survey the premises, design the three networks, cable the till and fit the access points, usually before you open. See our business WiFi service and the wider networking page. Surveys are free and quotes are fixed.
Book a Free SurveyFrequently Asked Questions
Do I need business broadband for a small shop?
Not always, but it helps if the connection earns you money. A residential line is cheaper and just as fast, but repairs can take days and support works office hours. A business line brings a repair promise, weekend support and usually a static IP address. If a day offline costs more than the yearly difference, buy it.
Am I responsible for what customers do on my guest WiFi?
You are not expected to police it, but you should take sensible steps: a guest network isolated from your own devices, terms accepted through a captive portal, a session time limit and basic content filtering on the gateway. Those show you acted reasonably, protect your own systems, and come built into the gateways we install.
How many access points does a café need?
Usually two. One ceiling access point covers roughly 100 to 150 square metres of open floor, so a single-room café can manage with one, but a kitchen, a back room, a first floor or outside seating each push the count up, as do thick brick walls. More than three usually means extenders rather than cabling.
Can I just use a home mesh system in my shop?
You can, and a tiny unit with one till and no guest WiFi may get away with it. But consumer mesh has no proper separation between your till and a customer's phone, slows as the shop fills, and gives nobody remote visibility when it fails. With card payments or guest WiFi involved, a business gateway and cabled access point cost little more.