Lately, we’ve had a surge of event organizers asking a familiar question: “Can we purchase your event badge printing software without renting your kiosk printers and machines?” It’s a great question — and one that highlights a bigger decision every event planner faces when it comes to event badge printing hardware: is it better to rent or to buy?
In this article, we’ll break down the real pros and cons of each option so you can make the most cost-effective and efficient choice for your next event.
If you’re just after the quick answer — yes, you absolutely can buy our software without renting our kiosks. But before you decide, read on. The insights ahead might just confirm your instincts… or completely change your strategy.
If you run multiple events a year, buying your own badge printing hardware can be a smart, strategic move.
When you own your equipment, you’re in full control: you can test setups ahead of time, train your team once (keeping that muscle memory), and roll into every event knowing exactly how your system behaves. There’s no need to worry about availability during peak event seasons and you have complete control over what hardware you want to buy to suit your needs.
From a financial perspective, the ROI adds up quickly. Rental costs can make sense for one-off conferences, but if you’re hosting multiple events annually, the math usually tilts in favor of ownership. After just a few uses, the initial investment often pays for itself — and from that point forward, every badge you print is saving you money.
However, owning your own badge printing hardware comes with some challenges that rental options don’t.
Let’s be honest — buying event badge printing hardware isn’t cheap. A single self-service kiosk setup typically costs around $2,000 (excluding software, ink, and badges), and most events with more than 150 attendees will need at least two or more units to keep check-in lines moving. That means your upfront investment adds up quickly.
Unless you already have the budget set aside, you’ll need to fund that purchase — either out-of-pocket or through a loan, which often comes with steep interest rates. It’s a significant capital expense, and it’s important to factor in how many events you’ll need to run before that cost starts to pay itself back.
We often hear event managers say, “It’s OK — we’ll just grab a thermal printer from Amazon for £30.” And yes, you absolutely can. But those printers are designed for home use — printing the odd shipping label, not handling the pace and pressure of event check-ins.
When it comes to event badge printing, speed and reliability are everything. A cheap printer might save you a few dollars upfront, but it’s likely to fail when you need it most, leaving you with long queues, frustrated attendees, and a stressful start to your event.
Your check-in experience is your event’s first impression. If the technology stumbles, so does the mood. That’s why choosing the right badge printing hardware isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s mission critical.
If you’re investing in hardware built for professional event use, here are the two main printer options we recommend:
Thermal Printer: Zebra ZD621 with cutter module: approximately $1,000 per unit
Fast, durable, and perfect for high-volume badge printing.
Inkjet Printer: Epson C3500 label printer:approximately $1,500 per unit
Ideal if you want full-color badges or sponsor logos
In addition to the printer, you’ll also need:
It’s an investment, but when your check-in runs seamlessly and attendees walk away impressed, it’s one that pays off from the very first event.
When budgeting for badge printing hardware, many event managers focus solely on the upfront cost of the printer — but the real cost comes down to the consumables and maintenance over time.
Direct thermal printers are attractive because they’re simple: there’s no ink to replace and no waste boxes to deal with. They’re lightweight, compact, and easy to transport – great if you’re flying or hopping between events.
However, there’s a trade-off. Thermal printers can only print in black, since the badges are heat-activated to turn black on the printed areas. That means your badge design options are limited, no logos, colors, or sponsor branding.
You can pre-order color pre-printed thermal badges from your supplier, but that comes with challenges:
By the time you factor in badge wastage and pre-printing costs, you can expect to spend around $800 per 500-person event using thermal badges.
Inkjet printing may seem more expensive upfront, but for many organizers, it ends up being more affordable and far more flexible.
Because inkjet printers (like the Epson C3500) print full-color badges on demand, you don’t need pre-printed stock. You can design and print everything on-site, right up until check-in opens. That means:
In terms of consumables:
That brings your total consumable cost for a 500-person event to around $400 — roughly 50% cheaper than the thermal route, with added flexibility, full-color branding, and zero waste.
Whether you rent or own your badge printing hardware, you’ll need to get it to and from each venue — and that means factoring in transport and logistics costs for every event.
Thermal printers are relatively compact, but they’re not exactly carry-on friendly. If you’re flying, they’ll need to go in your checked luggage, which introduces risk. Lost or delayed baggage can quickly turn into an on-site crisis when you’ve got a lobby full of attendees and no printers ready to go.
That’s why many organizers choose to ship their kiosks ahead of time using a courier service. It’s more reliable and gives you the confidence that your equipment will be waiting for you when you arrive.
If you’re transporting your own kiosks, don’t rely on the manufacturer’s original packaging — it’s not built for multiple trips. Invest in heavy-duty shipping cases designed for event equipment. A durable case that can actually withstand repeated handling typically costs $600 or more, but it’s worth every penny compared to replacing damaged gear.
Also, be sure to insure your shipments with higher liability coverage so that, in the event of loss or damage, you can recover the value of your hardware.
Taking your kiosks abroad? That’s where things can get tricky. You’ll need to handle customs declarations, trade agreements, and temporary import/export paperwork to avoid paying unnecessary duties both ways.
Depending on your company’s legal residence or event jurisdiction, you might even face restrictions on re-importing equipment — which can mean delays, storage fees, or, in worst cases, confiscation or destruction of the shipment.
Ask yourself: What’s your plan if your equipment doesn’t arrive on time? Whether it’s a lost shipment, customs delay, or damaged case, having a backup strategy — like a local rental option or on-site support partner — can make or break your event day.
Owning your event badge printing hardware means you’ll need to think beyond the events themselves — specifically about where to store your equipment and how to plan for replacements over time.
If you only own a single kiosk, storing it at home or in your office is simple enough. But once you scale up — two, three, or more kiosks — storage space quickly becomes an issue. That’s when many organizers find themselves renting external storage, which adds a monthly recurring cost to ownership.
Support
When you purchase your own event badge printing hardware, you also take on the responsibility for how it operates and integrates with your systems. That includes setup, configuration, troubleshooting, and maintenance.
It’s important to remember that if something goes wrong during your event — especially at check-in — your software provider can’t always support hardware they didn’t supply or certify. In other words, you’re largely on your own when it matters most.
That’s not necessarily a problem, as long as you’re prepared. Before your event, make sure you’ve:
Being proactive ensures you’re not left scrambling during the most mission-critical moment of your event: attendee check-in.
With frequent movement between venues, the risk of damage, loss, or theft becomes very real. Large conference centers and expo halls are particularly prone to IT theft — equipment can go missing in the chaos of setup or teardown, even for the most careful teams.
If you own your hardware, you’ll need to self-fund replacements unless you have comprehensive insurance coverage which, of course, comes with a monthly premium.
Even if nothing goes wrong, hardware has a finite lifespan. Components wear down, technology evolves, and reliability declines. On average, you can expect to replace:
The smartest approach is to plan ahead. Set aside around $350 per kiosk per year into a dedicated replacement fund. That way, when it’s time to upgrade, you won’t be scrambling to cover the expense or disrupt your event budget.
Most event managers don’t like renting badge printing hardware — especially when they’re running multiple events a year. It can feel like a never-ending expense, and when budgets are tight, every dollar counts.
And it’s true: over time, buying your own badge printing hardware will almost always work out cheaper. But as we’ve explored above, ownership comes with responsibilities — from maintenance and storage to transport, insurance, and replacement planning.
If you’re not ready to take on those ongoing demands, renting might be the smarter choice. Yes, you’ll likely spend more in the long run, but what you’re really paying for is peace of mind — no setup headaches, no equipment worries, and full support when you need it most.
So, how do rental costs actually compare — and what are the real pros and cons?
Let’s break it down.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room — costs. The good news? They’re not as high as you might think, at least not with us here at Just Attend.
You can rent a complete badge printing kiosk for just $400 per event. That price includes:
Unlike many competitors who charge per day — including weekends if delivery or collection falls on a Friday or Monday — we charge a flat rate per event. Like-for-like, Just Attend is the most affordable combined software and hardware rental provider in the event industry.
But affordable doesn’t mean cheap. You’re not compromising on equipment quality, reliability, or support. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that the service, setup, and reliability we offer rivals even the biggest (and most expensive) event badging providers out there.
To put it in perspective:
That means you’d need to run at least five events before ownership starts to deliver a financial return — and that’s before factoring in storage, transport, maintenance, and replacement costs.
Plus, your $400 rental includes end-to-end support. Every kiosk is fully prepared, tested, and configured before it leaves our facility, so when it arrives at your venue, it’s truly plug-and-play. You’ll be printing badges within 20 minutes of setup.
It’s worth noting that the rental fee doesn’t include software, shipping, badges, or ink — but neither does the $2,000 purchase price for buying your own hardware. That’s an important distinction many event managers overlook when comparing quotes.
When you rent your badge printing hardware from Just Attend, we handle all the logistics — from delivery and collection to coordinating directly with your venue. That’s one major responsibility you don’t have to manage yourself.
We liaise with your event venue to ensure:
If your event is overseas, renting makes even more sense. Instead of dealing with international shipping and customs paperwork, we handle it all for you. In many cases, we already have hardware based within your event’s country, minimizing delays and avoiding unnecessary duties or taxes.
Even when we ship across borders, our team understands the customs processes and documentation required to get the equipment in and out efficiently — no surprises, no hidden costs, no stress.
So if you’d rather board your flight without worrying whether your printers will arrive on time, renting with Just Attend is simply the safer, smarter choice.
Shipping badge printing kiosks can be expensive — the equipment isn’t small or light. (For example, the Epson inkjet label printer alone weighs nearly 30 lbs / 12 kg.)
We’ve optimized our logistics to keep costs low:
That means we can ship early to meet your deadlines, finalize your badge designs later, and still have everything perfectly configured by event day.
And remember — even if you own your hardware, you’ll still face these same logistics challenges and shipping costs. In many cases, managing it yourself can end up costing more than our full-service rental.
One of the biggest advantages of renting our hardware alongside our software is that you get complete, end-to-end support. From the registration platform where you load your attendee data, to the on-site kiosk software that prints your badges, everything is managed by a single partner — us. That means one point of contact, one support team, and one less headache for you to deal with during your event.
When you buy your own equipment, support becomes fragmented. You’ll have one contact for your laptop, another for your printer, another for your software — and when something goes wrong during check-in, you’re the one stuck in the middle trying to figure out who to call. That’s stress no event manager needs when hundreds of attendees are waiting in line.
Having one partner who can provide full technical support, remote assistance, or even on-site presence is, in our experience, one of the most valuable benefits of renting over buying. Speaking as an event organizer myself, I would choose to rent for this reason alone — because when it comes to check-in, I simply can’t afford for things to go wrong.
One common concern when renting badge printing hardware is not knowing exactly what you’ll get until you open the case on-site. Will the equipment be clean and fully functional? What if a printer shows heavy wear or a laptop arrives with missing keys? These details matter — the professionalism of your check-in setup reflects directly on your event, and you’ve invested too much to risk a poor first impression.
Many software providers that offer “hardware rental” don’t actually own the equipment themselves. Instead, they rely on third-party rental partners and simply resell or sub-lease the hardware to you at a margin. The result? Neither you nor your software provider has full visibility into the equipment’s condition before it ships.
In most cases, everything arrives fine — but when something does go wrong, and it inevitably can, it causes unnecessary stress at the worst possible moment. We know this firsthand, because we’ve experienced that model ourselves in the past.
At Just Attend, we take a different approach. We own all of our hardware, which means we’re not relying on external partners or middlemen. We are both the software provider and the hardware rental provider, giving us complete control from end to end.
That means:
Owning our equipment allows us to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience every time. When you rent both hardware and software from Just Attend, you’re getting a fully integrated service designed for reliability, speed, and peace of mind — wherever your event is hosted.
Renting badge printing hardware is convenient, seamless, and affordable — right up until the moment something goes wrong. Accidents happen: a laptop gets dropped, a printer takes a knock, or equipment goes missing after the event.
What many event managers don’t realize is that, buried in most rental agreements, there’s a clause stating that if any rented hardware is accidentally damaged, lost, or stolen while in your possession (or the venue’s), you’re responsible for the full replacement cost.
That means your $400 rental could suddenly become a $2,400 expense if you have to replace a kiosk. For teams on tight budgets, that risk can feel like a deal-breaker when comparing rental to ownership.
But here’s the reality: even in the unlikely event of accidental damage or loss, you’re still better off financially than if you’d purchased the equipment outright. Buying your own hardware means a $2,000 investment — and if it’s lost or damaged beyond repair, you’ll spend another $2,000 replacing it.
No one enjoys dealing with contractual clauses, but accountability can’t simply be waived because the damage was unintentional. That’s why we’ve made it easier to manage that risk.
At Just Attend, you can add our optional Damage Waiver Insurance for just $50 per kiosk. This protection covers accidental damage or theft while the equipment is in your care.
If the worst happens, you’re not liable for replacement costs — you simply walk away without penalty. Of course, if you choose not to take the insurance and damage does occur, you’ll be responsible for the repair or replacement costs as outlined in the rental agreement, just like any other provider.
This simple add-on gives you total peace of mind — so you can focus on running your event, not worrying about what-ifs.
As we’ve discussed, the biggest drawback of renting badge printing hardware is the ongoing cost. It’s $400 per kiosk, per event — indefinitely. In contrast, if you bought your hardware outright, your costs would start to level out after around five events.
That seems like an open-and-shut case for buying. But is it really?
When you rent badge printing hardware, you’re not just paying for the physical equipment. What you’re really investing in is the service, setup, and support that come with it — the peace of mind you don’t get when you own your own hardware.
Still, we understand the challenge. You want to lower your per-event expenses so you can redirect your budget toward things attendees actually notice and remember.
But here’s the truth: flawless badge printing shouldn’t be memorable. If attendees remember it, it’s usually because something went wrong — and that kind of experience can stick with them long after your event ends, impacting how they perceive your brand and future events.
Because we at Just Attend own both our software and our hardware, we can offer something unique that other providers simply can’t — free hardware rental.
Here’s how it works:
You’ll still need to cover consumables such as badges, ink, and shipping, but you’ll be saving significantly on rental fees — and those savings add up fast.
Example:
If you rent one kiosk six times in a year, your total rental cost is $2,400. Rent that same kiosk another three times within the same year, and your total remains $2,400 — no additional rental charges.
This model gives you the best of both worlds:
It’s a true win–win — reliable performance for you, and a seamless experience for your attendees.
If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you with your badge printing, book a demo or contact us below. We’ll reply within 24-hours.
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