Being in the event business ourselves we know how much things cost with some costs higher than others. Badge printing is one of them, but it’s a necessary component. Its necessary because you want to be sure you’re admitting legitimate attendees who have a right to be there, allows your exhibitors and other attendees to network easier, and in many cases required by event insurance and venues.
You may see badge printing as an unavoidable expense. To a degree this is correct, but you can optimize your expenditure in this cost center.
If you’re reading this article then perhaps you’re facing the same challenges we’ve faced in the past where event costs have escalated beyond what was budgeted due to world events and excessive inflation. Or perhaps your event is undersold versus where you’d hoped to be at this moment. Whatever your reasons, perhaps you’re looking at ways to save costs but still deliver the attendee experience and legal responsibilities at your event.
The good news is that I am going to show you how you can potentially save some cost with badge printing and event check-in.
How Much Is Badge Printing At Events?
The cost of badge printing depends on several factors, so there isn’t a definitive answer. For an event of 1,000 people you can expect to pay around $10,000 to $15,000 for this if provided by a specialist company.
When it comes to pricing lots of variable are taken into consideration.
- Where your event is located in relation to the badge printing supplier’s office
- Venue restrictions on the supplier’s permitted
- The duration you need badge printing services overall
- The number of people per hour for check-in
- The materials used for printing badges
- The day and time you need your event check-in to operate
- What infrastructure must be supplied by the badge printing supplier e.g. counters / booths etc.
All these variables need to be taken into consideration to produce a quote. The largest variable that can make the most impact to overall cost is the number of staff required to run your check-in and badge printing service.
If you have an event with 7,000 attendees, you may expect 5,000 of them to arrive within a short time frame and the remaining 2,000 to be more staggered. You may only have a small window of time for check-in too especially if your event is starting soon after the venue opens for business. Getting your attendees checked-in with their badge printed fast and efficiently sets them up for a good experience.
To accomplish this, your badge printing supplier needs to provide enough staff and kiosk stations to support the demand of your busiest hour. For example if each printing kiosk was able to print 4 badges per minute, you’d need approximately 22 kiosks, 22 kiosk staff members, and approx 8 queue management staff.
Using this example, let’s build an example quote for a 1 day, 7,000 attendee event based on a few assumptions:
| Item | Estimated Price |
|---|---|
| Pre-Event Planning (venue visit, meet with organizers, plan requirements) | $1,800 |
| Hire cost of equipment (3 day hire) | $6,950 |
| Cost of consumables (ink, badge labels) | $2,800 |
| Pre-Event Setup and Testing | $2,000 |
| Pre-Event Training and Sign-off for agency staff | $3,000 |
| Agency staff for event day (30 x 6 hours + 12 x 8 hours) ~$25 per hour | $6,300 |
| Technical support staff presence | $1,400 |
| Software Licensing | $1,500 |
| Post Event Teardown | $1,000 |
| Travel and expenses (100+ mile trip with overnight stay) | $2,500 |
| Total Estimated Cost | $29,250 |
Sure, staff can be retired from service once the queues have died down, but they will all have a minimum cost, usually billed in half-day increments.
Running an efficient and smooth process underpinned by optimized technology can help to reduce the amount of staff required.
How To Save Money On Badge Printing?
There are a few ways to save some money on badge printing. However, be aware that with every cost saving exercise, there will be pro’s and con’s.
Badge Via Mail
You can lessen the cost of onsite badge printing by offering to mail your attendees their event badge at the point of sale.
When attendees register for your event, they leave their home address and that triggers a fulfilment order that will print, label, and post their badge directly to them in advance of your event.
Within the package you can include additional marketing or merchandise such as exclusive offers and even their lanyard so that when they arrive at you event, they simply just need to walk in.
Without mail fulfilment all of your attendees would have to queue and check-in. If you’re expecting 1,000’s of attendees that’s a lot of equipment and people resource to staff the check-in area.
If your attendees arrive with their badge already around their neck, you need less check-in kiosks and less staff to run your badge printing service.
Just Attend offer a badge via mail fulfilment service where we can send your attendees their badge from just $3.99 per attendee.
Sending badges in the post to every attendee can be costly, especially for international attendees. To mitigate this you could selectively send badges to domestic attendees, attendees with a certain badge type, or even attendees who may pay an additional premium to beat the queues.
In our experience attendees are happy to spend $2-$3 more for a ticket if they’re able to get something in return, like being fast-tracked.
Let’s assume that your 7,000 attendee conference charges $2.50 premium on an attendee ticket to be mailed, and that you only offer this to your domestic attendees which account for 70% of your total attendee base, and 60% of them take up the offer. That’s 2,940 people or $7,350 in revenue.
Using Just Attend’s badge via mail service at $3.99 per ticket leaves you -$4,380.60 out of pocket.
But wait…
Out of the 2,940 people, approximately 90% (2,646) will remember to bring their badge with them because they have paid for the specific privilege of skipping the queues. This leaves you with a balance of 4,354 people to print badges on site.
Let’s revise that quote. Instead of 5,000 people arriving at the same time to check-in within your first hour, you’re now expecting approximately 2,500. With 4 badges per kiosk per hour, instead of 22 kiosks and staff members, you need 11. That’s a 50% reduction onsite in resources.
| Item | Estimated Price |
|---|---|
| Pre-Event Planning (venue visit, meet with organizers, plan requirements) | $1,800 |
| Hire cost of equipment (3 day hire) | $3,950 |
| Cost of consumables (ink, badge labels) | $1,400 |
| Pre-Event Setup and Testing | $2,000 |
| Pre-Event Training and Sign-off for agency staff | $1,500 |
| Agency staff for event day (30 x 6 hours + 12 x 8 hours) ~$25 per hour | $3,300 |
| Technical support staff presence | $750 |
| Software Licensing | $1,500 |
| Post Event Teardown | $750 |
| Travel and expenses (100+ mile trip with overnight stay) | $1,500 |
| Cost of Badge to Mail | $4,380 |
| Total Estimated Cost | $22,830 |
Compared to doing it all onsite on-demand, you save a potential $6,420 overall.
Early Check-in For Exhibitors and Speakers
Exhibitors and speakers can make up a good portion of your overall attendee numbers. In some events these can equate to 10-15% of your entire attendee base. They’re also most probably going to be onsite during your setup day, or within the vicinity.
You could open your badge printing service early the afternoon before your event to check as many of these people into your event. You might offer this out to attendees also who arrive early, or even offer a check-in at the hotel option.
Having one or two check-in kiosks available at a specific time reduces the burden placed upon you at event opening and can save you some resource and rental costs.
Two things we do at our events that Just Attend’s kiosk software supports are pre-printing exhibitor badges and place them on exhibitor stands so they can be collected by the exhibitors as they arrive on setup day and pre-printing speaker badges and delivering them to their hotel.
This significantly reduces the amount of badges needing to be printed within the first hour of the event.
Let’s see how much extra money you can save on your quote. With badge via mail you’ve already saved $6,420 on your 7,000 attendee event. Assuming 7% of these are exhibitors and 3% speakers, you can pre-print 700 badges into total.
You now need to print 3,654 badges on your event day and approximately 2,000 in your first hour bringing the total number of kiosks and staff required from 11 to 9.
| Item | Estimated Price |
|---|---|
| Pre-Event Planning (venue visit, meet with organizers, plan requirements) | $1,800 |
| Hire cost of equipment (3 day hire) | $3,250 |
| Cost of consumables (ink, badge labels) | $1,400 |
| Pre-Event Setup and Testing | $1,800 |
| Pre-Event Training and Sign-off for agency staff | $1,300 |
| Agency staff for event day (30 x 6 hours + 12 x 8 hours) ~$25 per hour | $3,000 |
| Technical support staff presence | $750 |
| Software Licensing | $1,500 |
| Post Event Teardown | $750 |
| Travel and expenses (100+ mile trip with overnight stay) | $1,500 |
| Cost of Badge to Mail | $4,380 |
| Total Estimated Cost | $21,430 |
Saving you an additional $1,400 which brings your total to savings to $7,820.
Volunteer Staffing
Depending on who you choose for your badge printing service, they may allow you to provide your own staff resources to help rather than agency staff that need to be paid. Here at Just Attend we allow this because our software is so easy to use that it runs itself!
Using volunteers is a great way to realize significant cost reductions in your badge printing expenditure. In many cases, volunteers could cost you nothing as they might be attending anyway and happy to lend you a free hour of their time to get you over the line.
However, as enticing as this option is, it comes with risk. With volunteers they have less commitment and are free to change their minds at the last moment leaving you with thousands of people to check-in and no-one to help them.
Therefore, it is always best to ‘hire’ more volunteers than you actually need. It is better to say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to people than not to ask in the first place.
Using volunteers means the badge printing company can reduce their quote by removing all staff costs related to agency (front of house) but retaining the technical support oversight.
Let’s see what difference that makes to the quote.
| Item | Estimated Price |
|---|---|
| Pre-Event Planning (venue visit, meet with organizers, plan requirements) | $1,800 |
| Hire cost of equipment (3 day hire) | $3,250 |
| Cost of consumables (ink, badge labels) | $1,400 |
| Pre-Event Setup and Testing | $1,800 |
| Pre-Event Training and Sign-off for agency staff | $500 |
| Technical support staff presence | $750 |
| Software Licensing | $1,500 |
| Post Event Teardown | $750 |
| Travel and expenses (100+ mile trip with overnight stay) | $1,500 |
| Cost of Badge to Mail | $4,380 |
| Total Estimated Cost | $17,630 |
This saves another $3,800 on costs bringing your total savings to $11,620.
Hopefully with these tips you can streamline your badge printing costs when using an external supplier. But what if you ran your own badge printing?
Self-Managed Badge Printing
With Just Attend you get access to our kiosk software so that you can run your own self-managed badge printing solution. This is inclusive of your platform license purchase.
Our kiosk solution is tailored for self-service use so attendees can print their own badge with zero touch. All they need to do is scan their ticket QR code.
Our software is lightweight, reliable, and resistant to poor or congested venue internet connectivity and can run on any Microsoft Windows PC, laptop, or tablet.
For badge printing, there are plenty of options:
- Full color dual or single sided print on site where the entire badge design is printed on demand on to blank heavy duty badges
- Direct thermal printing on to pre-designed, UV color printed heat sensitive badges (tear off and fold)
- Direct thermal printing on sticky back labels
The size of badge is down to you. The kiosks can print to any printer or media type. We’re able to supply you with our recommended media sizes of:
- Color print badge blanks – 102.5mm x 276mm fan folded, pre-punched for single and dual clip lanyards, with 96.5 x 134mm printable area both sides
- Direct thermal UV printed design 101.6 x 266.7mm fan folded perforated edge, pre-punched for dual or single clip lanyards, with 101 x 133mm printable area both sides
The cost for the print media ranges from $120 per 500 pack color print blanks to $300 per 500 for direct thermal UV printed badges.
What Equipment Do I Need?
To run the kiosk software you need any PC, laptop, or tablet that runs Windows 10 or 11. The hardware specifications are very low:
- 1Ghz CPU
- 4GB RAM (application requires less than 100MB of RAM)
- 1GB Hard Drive
- Wireless or Wired Internet connectivity
The kiosk can use the integrated webcam on laptop and tablets to detect QR tickets. However, we recommend that you also purchase a USB QR code scanner similar to a checkout at Walmart.
If you want to use full color printing, we recommend the Epson C3500 label printer as this is heavy duty, fast, and can be networked to share between kiosks. It also has a built-in cut tool that can slice off badges from the reel.
If you’re using thermal badges, we recommend Zebra direct thermal printers, our model of choice is the ZD421. If you’re using our perforated badges, then you don’t need the cutting tool add-on.
If these models don’t fit within your budget, you can of course purchase any label printer and any badge size to suit your needs.
Here is a bill of materials for budgetary pricing:
Economy Kiosk
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Dell Inspiron 15″ Laptop with Windows 11, 8GB RAM | $279.00 |
| Eyoyo 2D Barcode Scanner USB | $45.99 |
| Zebra ZD421 Direct Thermal Printer | $487.00 |
| Total | $811.99 |
How Many Attendees You Can Check-in Per Kiosk Per Minute
Provided that attendees arrive at the kiosk with their ticket QR code in hand ready to scan they can be checked-in with badge printed in less than 15 seconds end to end.
The actual check-in kiosk performance will find the attendees ticket in less than 1 second. The Zebra ZD421 printer will take approximately 6 seconds to spool, print, and tear off the badge once the data has been sent. The Epson C3500 takes approximately 4 seconds.
That’s a maximum of 7 seconds of technology processing time. The more prepared your check-in team and the attendees are, the more efficient your process.
How Many Kiosk Printers Do I Need?
If you’re using direct thermal printers, we recommend a 1 to 1 relationship between kiosk and printer for usability and performance. If you’re using the Epson C3500 printer a kiosk to printer ratio of 2:1 can be achieved very easily.
How Many Badges Do I Need
You will have some wastage in printer calibration, print testing, and attendees who need to reprint their badge for various reasons.
If you’re expecting 7,000 attendees, you’ll need to purchase between 7,500 and 7,750 badges due to pack sizes.
| Badge Type | Cost for 7,750 |
|---|---|
| Direct Thermal pre-printed with event design | $1,995 |
| Blank Badges for full color onsite print (Epson) | $2,548 |
Staffing Self-Managed Badge Printing
Our kiosk software is designed to be self-service and attendees require no assistance from staff to perform tasks. At most, staff are required to usher attendees and prepare them into a ready state before stepping up to the kiosk.
You may choose to have a handful of ushers to move them on once they have their badge or assist with the occasional query like missing ticket or lost badge.
With self-service badge printing using Just Attend you can staff kiosks with ushers at a ratio of 4:1, so 1 staff member for every 4 kiosks assuming they are in a line.
With your self service kiosks you can also do your own badge via mail service for the cost of a stamp, label, and envelope which can cost you about $1.20 per badge including domestic postage.
How Much Does Self-Managed Badge Printing Cost?
Let’s put this altogether. You have 7,000 attendees and you’re going to offer do it yourself badge via mail to 2,940 of them. You’re also going to pre-print and offer early check-in for 700 speakers and exhibitors, leaving 3,360 people to check-in on your event day.
Out of these you estimate 2,500 will arrive within the first 90 minutes of your event opening.
Assuming a worst case check in rate per kiosk of 4 badges per minute, you need a minimum of 7 kiosk stations. You’re going to staff the check-in using a combination of your own staff and volunteers.
You decide to use Just Attend’s self-service kiosk software and purchase the economy kiosk specification with pre-printed direct thermal badges.
| Line Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Economy kiosk x 7 units | $5,684 |
| 7,750 pre-printed badge labels with your own design | $1,995 |
| Cost for sending badges via mail at $1.20 per attendee | $3,528 |
| Total | $11,207 |
That’s a potential saving of $18,043 compared to the original quote for completely outsourcing the process to a supplier.
The savings increase year on year too. If you divide the cost of the hardware over a shelf life of 5 years, each year would cost you just $6,659 which gives you an on-track saving of $112,955 over the 5 year period.
Is Self-Managed Badge Printing Worth It?
Financially I think the results speak for themselves. However, if you’re relying on charity for volunteers to augment your team, then you will face challenges with last minute staffing. If you plan and mitigate you can still make a considerable saving.
As attractive as the savings might be, doing your own badge printing and taking responsibility for it could be one responsibility too many for you, so you’re happy to pay the premium to outsource the task.
If this is you, then we have a few other solutions for you.
We offer fully managed badge printing services for events hosted on our platform as well as other third party apps.
We also offer a hybrid solution where you can purchase your own hardware and run a self-managed badge printing service with your own staff and volunteers but we are onsite to augment your team to give them the technical support they might need and the comfort that your check-in process is running efficiently.
With this service you can still save significant sums of money verses the traditional outsourced way whilst still ensuring that you’re not neglecting one of the most important aspects of your event.
Talk to us today to find out more.
