Starbucks WiFi is a free public WiFi hotspot, and as such is unsafe. Anyone can access it and sadly some may want to steal your personal information. If you are unprotected on a public WiFi network, it is easy for a hacker to intercept your connection and get personal information like passwords, emails and credit card information. 

The best and easiest way to prevent any of your personal information being stolen is to use a VPN. Unfortunately the Starbucks WiFi login page and VPNs don’t play nicely. In most cases you will either have to disconnect from the VPN or not connect to Starbucks WiFi. We managed to find a solution to this problem so keep reading to find out.

Why does the Starbucks WiFi login page not load? First, we need to understand what a captive portal is and how it works.

The way captive portals work is they redirect you to a webpage where you must log in or accept the terms and conditions of usage. The network setup has specific IP address ranges that are accepted. These are assigned by the hotspot / router when you’re connecting.

If you are using a third party DNS to block ads, the WiFi login page may not display for you. In this case, switching the custom DNS off would fix the issue. However, it is more complicated than that. In many cases there are issues with the actual WiFi login page. And that is something that can only be fixed on the providers end. 

Here are a few more tips and tricks you can try to get the login page to display:

• Restart your system – This one solves a lot of problems, when an issue appears just restart your device and in many cases that will resolve it. Worth a shot!
• Disable pop-up blocking – If you have Pop-ups blocked on your system, the WiFi login page won’t show up. Here is a Hot to Geek article showing you how to do this in Chrome.
• Flush DNS cache – DNS server’s data of websites is stored in the cache. You may face this problem if the IP of the login page of the WiFi has changed recently. You can find instructions on how to flush DNS cache on any OS in this very helpful Hostinger’s article.

If you are concerned about your online privacy and keep your personal data safe, you are using a VPN. The thing is with most VPNs none of these tips and tricks will help. You will be stuck either exposed without a VPN or without Internet. It’s time to upgrade to Speedify and both be connected while staying safe.

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.

When you join the Starbucks WiFi 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 WiFi hotspot, Speedify will pop up the login screen in a window.
4. Once you login successfully, Speedify will immediately start using the WiFi connection, allowing you to seamlessly switch over from cellular to WiFi without stopping any of the things you are doing online.

Speedify uses channel bonding technology in order to bond multiple Internet connections at once. In the example above, it uses both WiFi and cellular connections on your smartphone or laptop.

Now you can finally connect to the Starbucks WiFi and not have login page issues. All while staying safe online.