When running your event you’ll need to check your attendees in. For this you need a check-in systems and a way to identify each person, usually with an ID badge.
Most event organizers have no way to do this in-house without assistance from suppliers.
If you’re looking for onsite badge printing for your event, what are your options?
1. Outsource To An Event Check-in Specialist
This is the most common option that event organizers choose. Outsourcing their entire event check-in and badge printing to someone who specializes in it offers piece of mind knowing that it will all be taken care of. From technology, materials, process, and staff resource.
The major benefits to you as an organizer are that you don’t have to take on the responsibility to running the operation and you don’t need to invest in hardware and systems to perform this activity.
There are many specialist companies out there who offer this service. However, it is surprisingly hard to obtain an estimate or price guide without first contacting them to discuss your needs.
The reason for this is because every event is unique in terms of numbers, duration, time of operation, location, and any event specific restrictions you may have that the company has to plan to work around.
That said, as we at Just Attend are such a company that can help you, let me share our costs with you to give you an idea.
For a 500 person event in the UK over 1 day we would charge roughly $6,500 (£5,100) to run your event check-in solution.
This includes:
- Hire of all equipment and service costs
- All consumables e.g. ink and badge labels
- Full onsite setup, testing, and derig
- Fully trained staff to help with the check-in process
You can find out more about our onsite badge printing service here.
2. Pre-Printed Badges
A budget option is to pre-print badges ahead of your event with a print manufacturer. Using this option you’re able to supply complex designs and have your badges created to a higher quality standard with heavier material and lamination that gives you ultimate control over design, look, and feel.
All you will need to do is supply your print partner with your design and an export of your attendee data.
Just Attend can offer you this service where we will print and ship your badges to you 24 hours before your event for as little as $1.73 (£1.34) per badge including shipping.
When you receive them, they are pre-sorted by attendee type (attendee, exhibitor, speaker, staff) and alphabetically to make it as easy for you to distribute as possible.
Whilst the production alone of your badges will only cost you $865 for 500 badges, you’re not saving $5,600 vs onsite badge printing.
You will need to factor in your own staffing costs to help check-in attendees using the Just Attend mobile app, then find and issue them their badge.
However, you need to be aware of some of the major disadvantages of this solution. I wrote another article on the pro’s and con’s of remote badge printing, but for brevity, I have listed the main points below:
- You need to ship your attendee list to your printers 2-weeks or more before your event
- You may not have badges printed for late registrations after the print submission deadline
- You can’t make any changes
- Print production errors can’t be corrected in time, what if your lead gen scan code is wrong?
I used this option in my first event before creating Just Attend and I had to hire agency staff to help with the check-in process. My badges cost me roughly $650 for 300 and I hired 6 agency staff for 14 hours in total each for training and the morning of my event which cost $30 an hour with expenses or around $1,176 total.
This option cost approx. $1,826 (in 2021) overall, which is about $2,100 in 2024 based on inflation.
Be sure that you fully understand the advantages and disadvantages of this option before committing to it. If you’re confident this option is for you, then find out more about our remote badge printing solution.
3. Do It Yourself Onsite Badge Printing
Your 3rd option is to run your own check-in and badge printing solution providing all the hardware and resources to execute it.
If you have your own staff available or have the option of using volunteers to help you, then this is a viable solution for you.
With this option you take on the role that you would’ve ordinarily outsourced to an external company. But in order to be able to do this you need a system that can help you achieve this.
When you use Just Attend, you get access to our event check-in and badge printing software which you can install on your own computer equipment.
All you need to do is purchase commodity hardware which is readily available:
- Windows 10 or 11 PC, Laptop, or tablet ( 2Ghz dual core CPU, 4GB RAM, Wifi or ethernet enabled)
- Infa-red USB 2D QR code scanner
- Zebra thermal label printer or if you want full color printer, Epson C3500
- Badge labels of your choice compatible with your printer
If you choose a thermal printer option, you can build your own kiosk for approx $1,000 including basic labels.
When using thermal printers, these tend to be USB connected and most don’t have an auto-cut option to slice the badge off the label roll after printing.
For these reasons I recommend that you buy 1 printer for every kiosk PC to avoid congestion and confusion around the printer at check-in time.
If you use the full color inkjet option, the Epson C3500 printer is the weapon of choice. These are commonly used of onsite badge printing (and the ones we use) because they’re fast (5 second print), reliable, and can be shared between kiosks due to their ethernet connectivity and post print auto-cut feature which is invaluable.
Although the printer is more expensive than thermal printers, because they can be shared by 2 or 3 kiosks without causing any queue delays due to their connectivity and output performance, the overall cost is comparable.
4 Kiosk Thermal Option
- 4 x Laptops ~ $400 each
- 4 x QR Scanners ~ $70 each
- 4 x Zebra ZD421 ~ $600 each
- 4 x 1,000 label rolls ~ $40 each
Estimated Total $4,380
4 Kiosk Color Print Option
- 4 x Laptops ~ $400 each
- 4 x QR Scanners ~ $70 each
- 2 x C3500 Printers ~ $1200 each
- 2 x fan fold labels (500) ~$90 each
Estimated Total $4,460
Whilst there are no additional costs for using the Just Attend Kiosk software when you use our platform, you do have to provide your own staff.
If these are volunteers, great. But even if you have to hire agency workers you will start to save money vs outsourcing your badge printing from your 2nd event.
3.5 Do It Yourself But Hire The Equipment From Us
The last option you have is a variation of do it yourself, except instead of buying your own hardware, you can rent the equipment from us.
Currently available in the UK and Europe, we will deliver all the equipment to your event, set it all up, and provide a technician onsite for the duration of your event to assist with any issues.
You provide the staff to run your check-in and at the end, we will pack it all up and take it away.
This options gives you the ultimate in budget flexibility as hiring our equipment costs over 50% less than our fully managed onsite option. This is because we don’t have to pay for resources and expenses for lots of staff members.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article gives you an idea of the costs and options that are available to you for onsite badge printing and it helps you come to a decision on which is best for you.
Overall having used all 3 options myself at my events I would say that based on my own experience, choosing a fully managed onsite badge printing solution is the best value for money. Yes, overall I pay more per event than doing it myself, but the convenience and comfort I get from knowing its a big problem taken care of far outweighs any money saving.
Whatever option you decide is the one for your event, Just Attend will adapt to fit in with your choice. We would love the opportunity to discuss your requirements, so please book a demo with us below to get started.
