Offsite vs Onsite Badge Printing For Events, The Pro’s & Con’s

You’re planning your next event and now thinking about event check-in and registration. How are you going to check-in hundreds or even thousands of attendees quickly and efficiently?

You’re now thinking about name badges and how you’re going to allocate one to everyone. What are your options?

1. Do nothing – this can be in some cases be the right decision
2. Handwritten on collection
3. Pre-printed before the event
4. Posted to attendee before the event
5. Onsite badge printing and check-in

Let’s explore the each option and their pro’s and con’s. After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding on which option or combination of options are for your event.

1. Do Nothing

You might think this option is crazy, but in some event types this makes perfect sense. If you don’t need a way of identifying individual attendees personally, then why bother with the expense of doing so?

For example, if your event is a closed door event, private, and away from public areas and you don’t need a way to generate exhibitor leads, then you can validate people’s tickets for entry at your registration and simply wave them through.

With this option the con’s far outweigh the pro’s of doing nothing. You want your event to be safe, secure, and compliant so that if the worst should happen, everyone is protected, including you.

Our experiences with event venues, exhibitors, and even attendees all say an identity badge for everyone is important.

• Venue require identity badges for health and safety and security reasons
• Exhibitors want identity badges so they can spot potential leads and makes introductions easier
• Attendees want identity badges because it makes networking a lot easier

So what can you do here if your budget doesn’t allow for badge printing? At the very minimum get yourself some pre-printed event badges. They don’t need to be personalized for each attendee, just a generic badge they can wear that shows they are part of your event.

Here are some options:

• Card / laminated printed badges
• Paper tyvek wristbands
• Button badges with pin or clip
• Stickers

2. Handmade Badges

If you want to provide a basic badge with some identification on a budget you could decide to hand make these onsite when attendees check-in.

All you need is a roll of labels and a sharpie.

You can boost the appearance of your handmade badges by buying pre-printed laminated badge backing cards. These can be branded in your event colors and logo with an area reserved for placing your hand written label.

You could even remove the need for a label and use a permanent marker to write the attendee’s name straight onto the laminated badge.

The advantage of this is that you can pre-attach lanyards to the laminated badge ahead of your event check-in making it quicker to dissipate queues.

The downside of this method is that you need to order more of these template badges ahead of time so you don’t run out. Laminated paper and plastic is harder or even impossible to recycle, so this option is not very eco-friendly to produce or dispose of.

3. Pre-Printed Badges

This option is probably most event organizer’s starting point for badging. You have the attendee list and your local printer can produce identity badges to your specification very cheaply. Why not just get all your attendee badges pre-printed and bring them to your event?

Whilst pre-printing your badges with a local print designer gives you the ultimate in badge design and feel control, the disadvantages of using this method far outweigh the postives.

I used this method at my first event before I created Just Attend. It was carnage and I vowed never to use this method again.

Initially I thought it was a great idea until the day I received the badges from the print manufacturers. They weren’t in any form of order so I had to spend hours sorting the badges into different types like attendee, speaker, exhibitor and then into alphabetical order.

After sorting I thought that the hard bit was complete and all I had to do is line up the badges in alphabetical order on the check-in desks and they would be easy to find.

Wrong. Lining up 26 rows of badges takes about 24 feet of tables when you factor in spacing for attendees. Then you need 5 or 6 staff members to check-in and find badges for each attendee.

Attendees don’t arrive in alphabetical order. Attendees with complicated names are even harder to find, especially when accents are involved.

This caused a lot of panic with the check-in staff and they found themselves tripping over each other trying to sort through different piles of badges.

They were so busy and rushed due to the volume of check-ins because of the delays in finding badges that piles got mixed up or put out of order which compounded the issues.

Furthermore, to have the badges pre-printed meant I had to submit my order 2 weeks before my event even though I was still selling ticket to it right until the day before the event. This meant I had a good portion of attendees arrive with no badge created, so I had to hand made those badge out of blanks and from ones that hadn’t turned up.

At the end of the event I had about 75-100 badges for people who I was expecting who didn’t turn up for the event. Somehow I had to find a way of disposing of these responsibly which is harder than you think.

4. Posted to Attendees Ahead Of Event

This is a great option for reducing your check-in queues at your event and offering your attendees a better experience as well as marketing opportunities for you.

When attendees register for your event you could ask for their home address as part of your registration form. Then a week or two before your event post out pre-printed badges directly to their home.

When they arrive at your event, all you need to do is scan their badge and validate their entry.

Posting out attendee badges ahead of your event allows the attendee to be more prepared for the event and gives them an opportunity to beat the registration queues.

It also offers you the opportunity to increase your marketing and sponsorship options by including a welcome pack and special incentives to attendees when they receive their badge.

When the attendee arrives at your event, they just need to pick up a lanyard, attach it to their badge and then walk into your event. All you need to do is deploy a check-in scanner to scan the badge to validate their entry.

However, you do need a supporting solution onsite because not all attendees will remember to bring them or have received them in the post.

Sending an attendee their badge ahead of the event will incur additional costs, but the cost can often be offset by reducing the amount of resources you need onsite for badge printing and check-in.

If you’re organizing a free event, you could even think about charging your attendee’s a fee for this service.

5. Onsite Badge Printing

Your last option is onsite badge printing where you provide the ability for attendees to arrive, check-in and have their badge printed on demand.

This is the most common method for badge printing in the industry because it is the most flexible, consistent, and easiest option you have. But it does come with some disadvantages.

Being able to offer onsite badge printing to your attendees is a no-brainer. It offers the ultimate flexible experience to both attendees and you as an organizer.

Attendees don’t have to remember their ticket before they leave their home, they can arrive, scan their ticket, and out pops their badge.

You as an organizer don’t have to worry about sorting through pre-printed badges or come up with complicated check-in processes for your staff to follow or deal with missing badges and excess waste.

But this does come at a cost. On average a one day check-in for 1,000 attendees costs between $8,500 and $12,000 for a dedicated onsite badge printing company to run your event check-in. This includes all badges, lanyards, equipment, and staffing.

To pre-print badges and hand them out at your event with lanyards for the same number of attendees would cost you around $2,500 plus your own staffing costs.

However, the reality is that unless you can staff your check-in with volunteers, then you really aren’t saving much using the pre-printed method vs onsite badge printing. Plus the convenience of onsite badge printing is value you can’t really miss out on.

Aside from the cost of hire, the disadvantage onsite badge printing has to you as an organizer is that you might not have the perfect badge look and feel. If you want that laminated, high-gloss, heavyweight feel to a badge, then these can only be produced in printing factory, not onsite and on demand.

Depending on the provider you choose you can have high quality designs printed either in full color or as a custom blank that is used in a thermal printer. But the most quality you’re going to be able to get onsite is around 400gsm in paper weight.

Most organizers are fine with this, which leaves the last disadvantage to consider and that is the technical risk associated with any live or on demand service. What happens if the internet connection breaks, or there is a power cut?

If you’re using an external provider with a separate system to your attendee ticket sales platform, do they have any integration challenges that would hinder onsite registration of new attendees, or reprints of badges because an attendee’s name is spelt wrong?

These considerations you should work through with your provider in advance of your event.

How Just Attend Can Help You

We can help you in many ways and have multiple badging solutions to choose from. We’re confident we have a solution that meets your budget and event needs.

1. Pre-Printing Badges

If you really want to use the pre-print method, then we are able to print all your badges ahead of your event and ship them directly to you either at your home / place of work, or the venue ahead of time.

If your event is in the UK we can deliver your badges 48 hours before your event by 24 courier ensuring you have your badges the day before your event.

We also have an express service that will hand deliver your badges the morning (before 8am) of your event all badges of attendees who registered up to 5pm (UK time) the day before your event. This allows you to continue to sell tickets right up to the final moments before your event.

With all badge types you will have a small number of blank badges so you can account for any late registrants.

For European events we can ship the badges to you, but the cut off date is 5 days before your event. This is because of customs and export delays. The last thing we want is your badges turning up the day after your event!

For rest of the world the cut off is 2 weeks before your event.

2. Print and Post Fulfilment

As long as you add into your registration form fields to capture attendee’s postal address, we are able to print and post your attendees their badge ahead of your event. This service is available worldwide and is provided as a fixed cost for UK and international destinations.

For more information, please find it here.

Highlights of this service include:

• Choose your own embargo – tell us when we can start shipping badges
• Include welcome letter or other marketing materials
• Branded paper and envelopes

3. DIY Onsite Badge Printing

Using Just Attend you have the ability to run your own onsite badge printing solution. Using our Windows based kiosk software, you can turn any PC or laptop into a check-in kiosk. This is included with every plan, even if you use the free plan.

Printer options include full color prints that allow you to create your badges from standard badge blanks and print your badge design and attendee data completely on-demand. Or you can use a thermal printer with branded labels or blank labels to print attendee data.

All you need is a PC, QR code scanner, and printer and away you go. Just don’t forget to hire staff or volunteers!

4. DIY Onsite Badge Printing With Rented Equipment

If you don’t want to buy the hardware and your event is in the UK or Europe, then you can hire our equipment for your event.

When hired, we arrive onsite to setup each kiosk, provide all the badges, and train your staff.

You then run your check-in yourself with your staff and we arrive at the end of your event to pack it all up.

5. Full Managed Onsite Badge Printing

Finally, if you want complete piece of mind and a major headache off your shoulders, you can hire us to run your event check-in and onsite badge printing.

We arrive at your event with all the equipment and staff to run it as a complete managed service.

Benefits of Just Attend Badge Printing

• Full color badge printing onsite with different style based on attendee type making them easier to identify.
  
• Different sized badge options. We are able to offer high quality laminated badge blanks and print on top of them.
  
• Custom badge designs that meet your branding requirements.
  
• Our kiosk software will continue to operate even without internet connectivity
  
• Check in stats and real time wallboards available within your management portal
  
• With our managed onsite badge printing you also benefit from:
  
  • 5G internet backup incase the venue internet fails
  • UPS power backup that will mitigate venue power cuts for 15 minutes so we can continue to check-in attendees
  • Dedicated troubleshooting and support desk for registration issues and app questions
    

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you with your next event, book a demo below.