1Getting started
ChinoWiFi turns any MikroTik-powered hotspot into a fully branded, mobile-money-ready WiFi business. There is nothing to install — your portal lives in the cloud and your router talks to it.
Create your account
- Go to the signup page Visit chinowifi.com/signup and enter your business name and phone number.
- Verify your phone We send a one-time code by SMS. Enter it to confirm the number — this becomes your owner login.
- Your portal goes live instantly We provision your branded portal at yourname
.chinowifi.com, create your owner account, and seed a few starter plans you can edit or delete. - Sign in to the dashboard You land in the operator dashboard automatically. Bookmark yourname
.chinowifi.com/dashboard— that's your control panel from now on.
Your login is your phone number. Keep it active — password resets and important alerts are sent there by SMS. You can add more staff logins later under Team & roles.
2Your portal & branding
Your captive portal is the page customers see when they connect to your WiFi. It carries your business name and lists the plans you sell. Open Settings → General in the dashboard to set it up.
- Business name — appears on the portal header, on payment SMS, and as the WiFi network name (SSID) on routers you provision.
- Portal title & welcome text — the headline and short message shown above your plan list.
- Currency & pricing — all prices are in Tanzanian Shillings (TZS), whole numbers, no cents.
Changes apply immediately. Reconnect a test device to yourname.chinowifi.com to preview exactly what your customers will see.
3Connecting your router
ChinoWiFi works with MikroTik RouterOS. Adding a router is fully guided — you don't touch keys, IP addresses, or RADIUS config by hand.
- Open the Routers page In the dashboard sidebar, click Routers.
- Add a router Under Add a router, give it a name (e.g. Main Branch), optionally pick the site it serves, and click Generate setup.
- Paste the script into your MikroTik Copy the generated script and paste it into your router's terminal (use WinBox over an Ethernet cable — the WiFi briefly drops while the script runs).
- Done — it self-configures The router downloads and applies its full config automatically: the secure tunnel back to us, the hotspot bridge, DHCP, the walled garden, and your WiFi network name. Each router gets its own hotspot subnet automatically.
No keys or IPs to copy. The setup script carries everything the router needs. Just name it, generate, paste, and wait for it to come back online.
Checking a router is healthy
Each router row on the Routers page shows a live status that auto-refreshes when you open the page. A debug strip under each row walks the tunnel and the router's API connection step by step, so if a router is stuck you can see exactly where. A green status means customers can be unlocked on that router.
4Sites & multiple venues
A site is a physical location — one cafe, one branch, one building. Tagging each router with the site it serves lets the dashboard show you where each router runs and group your reporting by location.
- Open Routers → Sites The Sites section is at the top of the Routers page.
- Add a site Enter a site name (e.g. Lifepoa Riverside) and an optional short code, then click Add site.
- Assign routers When adding or editing a router, pick its site from the dropdown.
You can run as many routers and sites as you like under one account, with one consolidated set of books across all of them.
5Creating plans
Plans are what your customers buy. Open the Plans page to create, edit, or remove them. Every plan has a name, a price in TZS, and an allowance. ChinoWiFi supports three kinds of allowance:
| Plan type | What the customer gets | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Time | Unlimited data for a fixed period (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 30 days…) | Cafes, lounges, casual browsing |
| Data | A data cap in MB/GB, used until it runs out | Hostels, offices, fair-use control |
| Combo | Both a time window and a data cap — whichever ends first | Streaming bundles, premium tiers |
What happens when a plan runs out
For each plan you choose an on-cap action — what to do when a data cap is reached:
| Action | Behaviour |
|---|---|
block | Disconnect the customer until they buy again. |
throttle | Drop them to a slower speed but keep them online. |
pay_as_you_go | Let them keep using data and bill the extra usage. |
Expiry is handled automatically. A time plan expires when its clock runs out; a 30-day plan can run as a rolling 30 days or to the end of the calendar month, depending on how it's configured. You don't have to disconnect anyone by hand.
6Vouchers
Vouchers are pre-paid codes a customer can redeem on the portal instead of paying online. They're perfect for offline sales, schools, events, and venues where mobile money isn't always practical.
- Open the Vouchers page Click Vouchers in the sidebar.
- Generate a batch Pick the plan the vouchers unlock and how many codes you want, then click generate.
- Sell & redeem Print the codes on receipts or cards. Customers enter a code on the captive portal and connect instantly — each code works once.
You can export a batch, search for a specific code, and delete unused vouchers from the same page.
7Mobile-money payments
To collect money online you connect a mobile-money gateway. ChinoWiFi supports the main Tanzanian aggregators, and once connected your customers can pay by STK push from any of the networks the gateway covers.
- Open Settings → Payment gateways (admin or owner role required).
- Choose your provider Pick ZenoPay, PalmPesa, or Pesapal — whichever aggregator you have a merchant account with.
- Enter your API credentials Paste the API key/secret from your provider account and save. Credentials are stored encrypted and never shown again in full.
- Set it as default Mark one gateway as the default so the portal knows which one to charge through.
Every payment is verified server-side before access is granted, and the ledger is idempotent — a customer is never charged or credited twice, even if the network retries a payment notification. You don't reconcile anything by hand.
8SMS notifications
ChinoWiFi can text your customers when their plan activates, is about to expire, or is topped up — with your business name as the sender ID. Set this up under Settings → SMS gateway.
- Open Settings → SMS gateway (admin or owner role).
- Enter your SMS provider credentials Your username, password, and the sender ID you want messages to come from.
- Send a test Use the Test button to confirm a message arrives before going live.
Broadcasts
From the SMS page you can send a one-off broadcast to your customers — promotions, downtime notices, or reminders. Viewing audience sizes and history is open to your whole team, but actually sending a broadcast is restricted to admins, since it spends your SMS credits and reaches every customer.
Phone numbers are normalised automatically — a customer can enter 07XXXXXXXX or 2557XXXXXXXX and it's handled correctly.
9Subscribers & sessions
The Subscribers page lists every device/customer that has connected, what they bought, and when their access expires. The Sessions page shows live and recent connections reported by your routers.
- Returning customers reconnect automatically — once a device is recognised it skips the captive portal and connects straight away while its plan is still valid.
- Sessions populate from RADIUS accounting sent by your router. If Sessions looks empty, it usually means the router isn't reporting accounting yet — check the router is online and healthy on the Routers page.
10PPPoE customers
Alongside hotspot/voucher selling, ChinoWiFi supports PPPoE for fixed monthly subscribers — the model used for home and office fibre/wireless plans. Manage these on the PPPoE page.
- Create a subscriber with a username, password, and plan (operator role or above).
- Rotate a password, suspend, or delete a subscriber (admin role).
- Self-service renewal — PPPoE customers can renew by confirming their phone number and paying, without you lifting a finger. Expiry reminders go out by SMS before access ends.
11Reports & revenue
The Overview page gives you today's and this month's earnings, active users, and a revenue-by-channel chart at a glance. The Reports page goes deeper:
- Revenue over any date range, broken down by channel — exportable as CSV.
- Usage — how much data your plans actually consumed.
- Subscribers — growth and activity over time.
The Payments page shows every individual transaction with its status, so you can trace any single payment end to end.
12Your team & roles
Invite staff under Settings → Operators (admin or owner). Each person gets their own login, and you control exactly what they can do with one of four roles:
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Viewer | Read everything — dashboards, lists, reports — but change nothing. |
| Operator | Everything a viewer can, plus generate vouchers and create PPPoE subscribers. |
| Admin | Manage plans, routers, gateways, SMS, send broadcasts, and manage staff. |
| Owner | Full control of the account, including billing-level settings. |
Give out the least access that gets the job done. Front-desk staff usually only need Operator. Reserve Admin and Owner for people you trust with money and configuration.
13Custom domains
You start on yourname.chinowifi.com, but you can put your portal on your own domain so customers only ever see your brand. It's fully self-service from the Domains page (admin or owner role).
- Add your domain On the Domains page, enter your domain (e.g.
wifi.yourbusiness.co.tz) and click Add domain. It appears as Pending DNS. - Point DNS at us At your registrar, create the record shown on the page — an
Arecord to our IP for a bare domain, or aCNAMEtochinowifi.comfor a subdomain. On Cloudflare, keep it DNS-only (grey cloud) — proxying breaks certificate issuance. - Click Verify We check your DNS in real time. Once it points at us the domain flips to Verified. If it's not ready yet, we tell you what it currently resolves to so you can fix it and retry.
- HTTPS is automatic A free TLS certificate is issued and renewed for you on the first visit — nothing to buy or maintain. Optionally click Make primary to set it as your canonical address.
Your .chinowifi.com address keeps working alongside any custom domain. DNS changes can take a few minutes to propagate — if Verify doesn't pass immediately, wait a moment and click it again.
14Troubleshooting & FAQ
Customers can connect to WiFi but the portal won't load
Make sure the router is online and green on the Routers page. The setup script configures the walled garden so the portal is always reachable; if a router was set up manually or partly, re-run the generated script.
Sessions / usage reports show zero
This means your router isn't sending RADIUS accounting yet. Confirm the router is healthy on the Routers page — once it reports sessions, the numbers fill in. It is not a billing bug; access still works.
A customer says they paid but didn't get online
Open the Payments page and search for the transaction. Each payment shows its real status (pending, succeeded, failed). Access is only granted after the gateway confirms success — a pending or failed payment is never credited.
I forgot my dashboard password
Use Forgot password on the login page. A reset code is sent by SMS to your registered phone number.
Can I sell in a currency other than TZS?
ChinoWiFi is built for Tanzania and prices are in whole Tanzanian Shillings. Talk to us if you operate elsewhere.
15Getting help
Stuck on something this guide doesn't cover? We're a message away.
- WhatsApp: +255 716 969 678 — fastest way to reach us.
- Phone: +255 716 969 678
- Email: abelchinoga@gmail.com