Book a demo
Comparison · Updated July 2026

Swift Fox vs UISP

If you're a small, all-Ubiquiti WISP, UISP is free and good, and you should probably just use it. This page is for everyone else — mixed-vendor networks, MikroTik cores, operators who've hit UISP's limits — and for UISP shops who want to keep it and add what it doesn't do, since Swift Fox syncs with UISP directly. If we get a fact wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.

Stick with UISP alone if…

Your network is all (or nearly all) Ubiquiti, your subscriber count is small, and basic billing plus device management covers your needs. UISP's onboarding of Ubiquiti gear is really slick, and free is free.

Add or switch to Swift Fox if…

You run mixed vendors or a MikroTik core, you need real monitoring with paging and history, QoE shaping without third-party plugins, MPLS traffic balancing, DDoS protection, or billing with card processing and accounting-grade reports. Keep UISP if you like — Swift Fox syncs with it.

The core difference

One vendor's ecosystem vs. your whole network

UISP is built around Ubiquiti hardware. That's its greatest strength (adopting and provisioning Ubiquiti devices is nearly automatic) and its main limit. Step outside the ecosystem and things get harder: getting UISP to do disconnects or shaping on a MikroTik router means relying on third-party and open-source plugins that you install, maintain, and troubleshoot yourself.

Swift Fox is vendor-neutral by design. It was built running a real network with Ubiquiti, Cambium, Mimosa, and MikroTik gear side by side. Monitoring collects signal, MCS, and capacity from every major vendor onto one colour-coded map; shaping, captive disconnects, CGNAT, and MPLS balancing are native, automated functions of your MikroTik edge, with no plugins or glue scripts to maintain, and they're supported by us.

And our monitoring is a different category altogether. Swift Fox pings every customer radio every minute with history going back forever, pages your on-call tech with time-of-day thresholds and rotations, measures live backhaul capacity, and rebalances MPLS traffic when a link degrades.

Feature by feature

What each platform does

CapabilityUISPSwift Fox
PriceFreeself-hostedFrom $0.75 / sub / mo$50 monthly minimum (network only)
Ubiquiti device onboarding & provisioningExcellentthe best in class for Ubiquiti gearAuto-discovery of customer radiosacross all vendors
Multi-vendor support (Cambium, Mimosa, MikroTik…)LimitedUbiquiti-centricEvery major vendornative collection by SSH, HTTP, SNMP - with new model support added all the time
Per-CPE ping history, paging & on-call rotationsDevice status & outage alertsYesevery radio, every minute, history forever
Shaping & disconnects on MikroTikVia third-party / open-source pluginsself-installed and self-maintainedNative & automatedfq_codel queues, captive-portal disconnects — supported by us
Tier-fair congestion shaping (PFO)—Yesevery tier keeps the same % of paid speed on a saturated backhaul
Backhaul capacity measurement & MPLS auto-balancing—Yesunique to Swift Fox
DDoS detection & CGNAT management—Yes
Billing & CRMIncludedsolid basic billingOptional tiercard processing, overage billing, GAAP/IFRS reports
Self-service reconnect after nonpayment disconnect—Yesbranded captive portal
Hosted PBX / call centre—Optional tier
SupportCommunity forumthe trade-off of freeDirect support from usanswered by an engineer with experience running WISP networks
Works with the other platformAPIYes — UISP syncaccounts & assigned CPEs sync automatically

UISP information based on publicly available Ubiquiti documentation as of July 2026. UISP and Ubiquiti are trademarks of Ubiquiti Inc.; Swift Fox Systems is not affiliated with Ubiquiti. If anything here is outdated or inaccurate, email us and we'll correct it promptly.

The popular third option

Keep UISP and add the network layer

One of our most popular setups: UISP stays as your billing and CRM — no migration, nothing to relearn — and Swift Fox adds everything it doesn't do. The sync makes it nearly zero-effort.

How the UISP sync works

1 · Connect

Link Swift Fox to your UISP instance. Customer accounts and their assigned CPEs sync automatically into Swift Fox.

2 · Map

Add your towers and backhauls to the Swift Fox netmap — the one manual step.

3 · Done

Full monitoring with paging on every synced CPE, plus native shaping, captive disconnects, and MPLS balancing on your MikroTik — driven by UISP account status.

Billing stays in UISP, and what your customers notice is that the network got better.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

UISP is free. Why would I pay for Swift Fox?
If UISP fully covers you, don't — keep using it. Swift Fox earns its cost when the gaps start costing more than the subscription: an unmonitored backhaul failing over a long weekend, support hours spent on "I paid, reconnect me" calls that a captive portal would handle, a MikroTik shaping plugin breaking after an update with nobody to call, or a backhaul upgrade you could have deferred months with tier-fair shaping. Most of our customers came to us at the point where one of those had just happened.
Do I have to stop using UISP?
No — keeping UISP is one of our most popular configurations. UISP remains your billing and CRM, and its Ubiquiti device management stays as good as ever. Swift Fox syncs accounts and assigned CPEs from UISP automatically, then layers on monitoring, paging, QoE shaping, captive disconnects, and MPLS automation.
My network is mostly Ubiquiti with some Cambium and a MikroTik core. Which fits?
That mix is exactly where UISP alone gets frustrating and exactly what Swift Fox was built on. You can keep UISP for billing and Ubiquiti provisioning, and let Swift Fox monitor all vendors on one map and automate the MikroTik natively — or consolidate fully onto Swift Fox. Both paths work; a demo with your topology is the fastest way to see which you'd prefer.
What do I need to get started?
A pingbox — a free VM image, a cloud tunnel, or a small embedded device — plus a MikroTik router at your upstream edge for the automation features. Monitoring works across your existing gear with no other changes, and setup includes two hours of free onboarding with a Swift Fox network engineer.
Who builds Swift Fox?
Swift Fox was built by operators who founded and ran a multi-thousand-subscriber WISP in southern Alberta for ten years — on a network that mixed Ubiquiti with other vendors, which is exactly why vendor-neutrality is core to the design. When you book a demo, you talk to the founder who wrote the code.

See the UISP sync running, live

Book a 20-minute demo — bring your UISP instance and your topology, and we'll show you exactly what you'd gain. No slide deck, just the product and the person who built it.

Book a 20-minute demo Start a free trial

Questions first? [email protected] · 1-866-779-1608