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Local only lets a guest into your Venue once it has detected they are physically there. Three technologies can do that detection. You pick one — the setup wizard recommends a fit when you sign up, but the choice is yours. Until one is active, nobody can enter your Venue.

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The three options

Bluetooth beacons

Small devices you place in your Venue. The only option you can set up yourself.

WiFi network

Your existing access points act as the presence signal.

GPS geofence

A boundary drawn around your site.

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Which one fits

Beacons are the only option that supports gated zone rooms — chat rooms that open only for guests standing near a specific beacon. If you run a large Venue and want to drive traffic to a particular area, that is an argument for beacons even where WiFi would otherwise do.

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Beacons

Beacons are paid hardware. There is currently a promotion offering a free beacon to approved requests — ask during signup or contact support. How many you need: one or two for a small Venue, three for a larger one. The setup wizard recommends a number based on what you tell it about your space. What you receive: USB-powered or battery-powered iBeacons, unconfigured from the factory.

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The lifecycle

1

Order

Through the setup wizard at signup, or by contacting support later.
2

We ship

Local adds the beacons to your Venue profile and marks them shipped. They appear in the app’s device management section before they reach you.
3

You configure them

Open device management in the app. It lists the beacons you should have received. Tap the scan button — the app finds them, connects, and writes the correct identifier and a protected password to each one.If several beacons are in range, all of them are configured in a single pass.
That is the whole setup. Two steps in the app, no technical knowledge, no pairing codes to type.

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WiFi

If you run managed access points, they can serve as the presence signal: Local recognises your Venue from the access point a guest is connected to. This is not self-serve. Contact Local support and we will configure it against your network.
Guests are also offered a one-tap WiFi profile install during onboarding, which lets them connect to Local-enabled networks automatically on future visits.

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GPS

A geofence around your site. Suited to large, isolated locations where a guest being “within the boundary” genuinely means they are at your Venue. Not self-serve — contact Local support. Your address polygon was already pulled from OpenStreetMap at signup, so there is usually a boundary to start from.
GPS is a poor fit for a Venue on a busy street or in a shopping centre, where the boundary would also catch people walking past or sitting in the business next door. Use beacons or WiFi there.

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Checking it works

Once presence is live, the fastest test is to walk into your Venue with a phone that is not signed in as an admin. A guest account should move from the lobby screen to your Venue’s welcome screen within a few seconds. Your admin account will not test this correctly — admins bypass presence verification by design.

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Next

Your first 15 minutes

What to set up before you open to guests.