Picture it, it was 2010 and just announced that Starbucks would offer free Wi-Fi to all US Stores. You remember this, wasn’t that just yesterday? Fast forward, we are moving onto another decade and Starbucks Wi-Fi is still a pivotal part of most of our days, not just giving us a great cup of coffee to help boost our energy. But allowing us to stay connected at a time that Wi-Fi is our lifeline to staying in touch with others. So, if you are having issues with getting the landing page, it’s probably because there is so much going on with the Wi-Fi connection that you're on, it’s our everything and just, not always able to keep up with such demand.  

Keep reading about why you are having this issue and for the easy fix to it!

Before we can talk about why you get Starbucks WiFi landing page not loading issue, you need to understand what a captive portal is.

Captive portals are web pages that are displayed once you connect to a public Wi-Fi network usually. The user has to either accept some terms and conditions or log onto the network.

When you log on to a Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspot, you should be redirected to a webpage – the captive portal. That requires you to accept some terms and conditions before you can use the Internet.

So, why do you get Starbucks WiFi landing page not loading problems? The problem is not that you can’t connect to the network, but you can’t get the captive portal to display.

It’s hard to know why this sometimes happens unless you are the one running the network at Starbucks. Sometimes there are breaks with the system, but it could be a different reason for different networks.

In other cases, having your computer set to use a custom DNS server can cause problems with a captive portal. If you are using a VPN, chances are the VPN is causing the issue.

That said, there are still things you could try, just don’t get your hopes up too high. Check out our cheat sheet here for some potential fixes.

If you are even a little concerned about your online security and privacy, chances are you are already using a VPN. And if you’re not, you should be, especially if you often connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots. A VPN will encrypt your data and prevent any hackers from stealing your personal and sensitive information like social media passwords, credit card details, etc.

However, you may have noticed that when Starbucks WiFi landing is page not loading if you are using the VPN. You will need to disconnect the VPN in order to connect to the Wi-Fi, which leaves you exposed.

This happens because the network setup has specific rules about IP address ranges that are acceptable to log in. These are assigned by the hotspot / router at Starbucks. Since you are using a VPN to mask your IP address, the login page will see a completely different IP than the one it’s expecting. So, you won’t be able to connect to the Internet at all.

Lucky for you, there’s a simple solution for that: just use a smart bonding VPN like Speedify

When you join the Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspot, Speedify will:

1. Show you a notification asking you if you want to login.
2. Keep you connected over cellular data so your other ongoing online activities (like Skype / Slack calls, streaming, gaming) will continue to work via the cellular connection, protected by Speedify so you don’t have to worry about dropped calls or streams.
3. If you click the notification prompting you to connect to the Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspot, Speedify will pop up the login screen in a window.
4. Once you login successfully, Speedify will immediately start using the Wi-Fi connection, allowing you to seamlessly switch over from cellular to Wi-Fi without stopping any of the things you are doing online.

Speedify is the only VPN app that can help you combine multiple internet connections (Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, Ethernet, Starlink, Satellite and more) to improve the stability, speed and security of your online experiences. Moreover, Speedify handles captive portals better than any other VPN:

• when it detects a captive portal, it automatically moves the traffic to and from the captive portal login page outside of the encrypted VPN tunnel
• once you successfully log onto the network, Speedify moves that direct traffic back to the VPN tunnel
• you can always use the split tunneling feature (Bypass) for specific services - this will put traffic to and from those outside of the bonded VPN tunnel.

Now you can finally fix Starbucks WiFi landing page not loading problems and not worry about your data and privacy.