[NEBULA] Captive Portal Functionality

Drew

I am trying to capture the email of users when they first connect to WiFi. My plan is once they connect, bring up a page with email form field, once they fill it out they hit submit then the next page captures that email and sends it to our MailChimp API, then redirects to our homepage. I have tried everything; the built-in portal pages, custom pages, etc. I can capture email with custom pages, it seems like I have to hit http://access-point-IP/cgi-bin/Clicktocontinue.cgi for it to unlock the users machine to access the internet. When I point my MailChimp script to redirect to that cgi, it just errors out. All our AP's are tied into the nebula control center.

So, my path to access internet would be - User connects to WiFi → Splash Page w/ email field auto opens → MailChimp API Script → Allow user access to internet (i.e. unlock their IP) → Go to our main website.

How can I do this?

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @zenadmin,

I think you can build up a external captive portal web server for this requirement.

We provide the captiva portal html file to our users. You can edit the "click_to_continue.html" to have a column to enter the email address and add additional function when click the "Agree" button. You may write your own function to make the server sent the email address to your email, or you can store it in anyplace.

Here are some FAQs to set the external captive portal:

How to configure external captive portal — Zyxel Community

[Nebula] How to configure external captive portal for a SSID? — Zyxel Community

Hope these helps.

Zyxel_Barney

Hi @Drew

Are you perhaps using an external captive portal and using MailChimp to mine the email addresses there?

Is there a reason why you can't gather the email addresses from the Nebula platform's frontend?
This should be possible if you set the NAP's captive portal to Nebula Authentication Server and allow users to create auto authorized accounts.

Proceed to ORGANIZATION > Configure > Cloud authentication > Guest and the emails should now be saved there.

Regards,
Barney Gregorio

Drew

If I went this route, it would require users to create/manage accounts. We don't want that. We just want a simple email field w/ a submit button. Our goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible.

CrazyTacos

What about using sign-on with Facebook accounts?
You should be able to gather the email accounts using the email summary report.

Drew

No, still don't want any sort of sign in requirement. We just want to capture email. I'll figure out another way. Thanks all for the input so far.

IvoxEngineer

Did you manage to find out in the end?

I'm trying to achieve the same with no luck

Drew said:

No, still don't want any sort of sign in requirement. We just want to capture email. I'll figure out another way. Thanks all for the input so far.

zenadmin

Would love to know if anyone figured this out….

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @zenadmin,

I think you can build up a external captive portal web server for this requirement.

We provide the captiva portal html file to our users. You can edit the "click_to_continue.html" to have a column to enter the email address and add additional function when click the "Agree" button. You may write your own function to make the server sent the email address to your email, or you can store it in anyplace.

Here are some FAQs to set the external captive portal:

How to configure external captive portal — Zyxel Community

[Nebula] How to configure external captive portal for a SSID? — Zyxel Community

Hope these helps.

MyPlace

Hey all — jumping in here as this is exactly the use case we’ve been working on.

We recently launched a new external captive portal integration for Zyxel Nebula that solves this exact flow:

• Guest connects to WiFi
• Simple branded page with email field appears (no account creation or social login required)
• Email is captured and synced to tools like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or HubSpot
• Guest is instantly redirected to your homepage or desired landing page

No need for users to create accounts or manage credentials. It’s designed to be quick, clean, and unobtrusive — ideal for hospitality, retail, or events.

If you want to see how it works, here’s the info:

👉 https://myplace.app/devices/zyxel