Visitors
A visitor is a named chest in a room that is not theirs. We hire and sell 250×122 three-ink e-paper badges for that job — office mornings and event days — and we refuse to sell a workplace operating system to get there. Lists and magic links are live. Calendar minting is not.
Office visitors trickle. A candidate at 09:10. A supplier at 11:40. A contractor who was not on yesterday’s list. Workplace platforms built kiosks for that trickle: type, consent, host ping, sticker or Bluetooth push. Fair, if that is every weekday.
Event visitors arrive as a cohort. A coach. A chapter table. A client day with a known spreadsheet. The names existed before the glass. Printing them at the glass is a tax on a list you already had. We compile the list onto film in Cleckheaton and send a crate. That is the second clock.
Search calls both clocks “visitor management.” Joan’s visitor-management solution page (getjoan.com, September 2026) is a strong example of the first clock plus reusable e-paper, then a wider workplace catalogue. We keep both clocks on this pillar and stop before desks, parking, and signage playlists. A ten-badge hire and a two-hundred-badge buy use the same face compiler. The clock you run is a quantity and a date, not a new product line.
If your building runs both clocks, you are allowed to own a weekday tray from someone else and still hire a crate for Thursday’s open day. Coexistence is not a failure. Ego is optional. The film does not care who sold the kiosk.
The designer on inkbadgehire.com is a compiler, not a mood board. Input: name, firm, role bar, optional QR, a mark that survives three inks. Output: a 250×122 image in brick red, black, and e-paper white. There is no grey. There is no photograph. If the preview is unreadable, the lanyard will be unreadable. Handshake distance is the test: coffee in the other hand, first name spoken without squinting.
Red is expensive on that grid. Spend it on VISITOR, GUEST, HOST, CONTRACTOR. Black carries the letters. White is the field. Chapter marks and logos sit smaller because the introduction is the person, not the brand guidelines PDF.
We programme that grid at Premier House, Bradford Road, Cleckheaton — ONDRAFT LTD, Companies House 17265335. The same visual family shows up in Dark Store hardware tools. That is a compiler note, not a warehouse advert. Daniel Cluderay reviews the copy and wears the kit on Tuesday chapter mornings. First person is allowed because it is true.
BNI looks exist because we sit in a chapter. It is not an official BNI International partnership. Do not write that into a tender. Upload your own marks under your own licence. Conferences, clinics, and showrooms use the identical panel with different bars.
Ship-state: the image is on the film when you open the box. Lobby-state: a tablet writes the image after the guest exists in the foyer. Joan’s public badge materials have described a Bluetooth lobby push on the order of ten seconds, on a larger four-colour panel that can hold a thumbnail photo. That is a different machine and a different clock. We link getjoan.com when we compare, and we date the sentence September 2026 because shops change.
Ship-state fails when the list was a lie. Walk-ins without spares. A plus-one after the van left. We tell you to count those people. Lobby-state fails when the Wi-Fi is slow, the tablet is flat, or the badge has not been charged since last month. Different failures. Pick the one you can staff.
During an active hire window we can often rewrite a face without a return post. That is still our compiler, not a kiosk you installed. Owned devices keep the compiler after year one for thirty pounds per month per account. Hire faces belong to the dates you paid. When the window ends, the crate comes back so the next organiser can have a slot.
Do not pair our bezels into a portal we do not operate. Two compilers on one radio is a debugging hobby, not a visitor morning.
Hire is quantity × calendar days × £6 per badge, plus £20 postage out and back. Ten badges for two days is £140 including postage — the chapter-table example we print everywhere because we actually use that size. Twenty-five badges for one visitor morning is £170 including postage. Fifty for a conference day is £340 including postage. Multi-day counts dates, not hours in the room.
Buy is £80 per device plus £20 postage once. Year one of the account platform is included, then £30 per month per account. Five owned badges are £420 including postage. Weekly cadence often moves from hire to buy after you have worn the physics. The buy-versus-hire guide is the spreadsheet. This pillar is the job.
Kit sizes of 1, 10, 25, and 50 are shortcuts. Checkout will quote higher. Email hire@inkbadgehire.com when the quantity field is not enough or the dispatch date is a single hard morning for a large list. A booking request is not a hold until we confirm. Physics includes vans from West Yorkshire.
We ship UK-wide from Cleckheaton. The published postage is the UK hire figure. If you are outside the United Kingdom, email before you assume the number. We do not run a thirty-city landing-page farm that pretends we have a warehouse in every postcode.
People holds names. Events attach people to dates. The designer compiles faces. Magic links let guests pick a QR destination before they arrive. Team invites let more than one organiser touch the list. Billing exists because hire and buy are money. Returns exist because hire is a library, not a sale.
That stack is the visitor pre-registration we actually ship. The guest does not type at the glass if the list was knowable. The greeter hands a named bezel. Coffee happens. That is not a fluid workplace. It is fewer seconds of foyer typing.
Calendar and booking connectors that mint visitor rows from Google, Microsoft 365, or booking tools are specified, not live. There is no OAuth button today. There is no fake “Allow” screenshot. The calendar-integrations answer exists so a tender can score honesty. Until that button exists, export the attendee column and import it. Ugly. Works. Many large firms will keep doing that after OAuth exists because their guest list is a CRM export.
Out of scope, listed so it cannot hide in a logo wall: desk hotelling, parking, digital signage CMS, AI agents in Teams, occupancy cameras, auto-release of rooms, SSO as a product, NDA vaults, fire-muster apps, HID/Paxton/Salto as if the badge were a door token. Door e-ink displays are a later hardware pillar with no public SKU and no buy CTA on this site.
You are eight people, or forty, and you still receive humans who are not on payroll. Stickers curl. A ten-badge hire for a client morning is the smallest meeting that feels like a meeting. You do not need a demo call. You need dates, a list, and a crate.
Paste names. Pick GUEST and HOST templates. Send magic links if QR matters. Book. We programme. You clip. You return the box on the prepaid label. If Tuesday becomes every Tuesday, buy. The small-business answer is the sibling with worked totals.
You still need to spell names. You still need a greeter with hands. Simple is fewer radios, not a miracle. If every arrival is a surprise courier who must sign a legal banner, a kiosk vendor is closer to that glass. Hire will frustrate you because the list was never knowable.
Mid-sized firms (a receptionist and a printer they resent) should hire one visitor-day kit before they capitalise a tray. If the receptionist prefers a tablet after that, you learned something cheap. If they prefer the crate, buy the core and hire overflow for the coach.
Import a directory. Mix contractor, candidate, and guest layouts. Brand the mark. Order volume. Email for dispatch dates above the usual kits. Owned devices stay on the account after year one. Overflow hire still uses the £6 day-rate for the annual open day so you do not capitalise a second tray that sits eleven months in a cupboard.
Security, facilities, marketing, IT, and procurement will each mean a different object when they say “visitor management.” Put the 250×122 panel on the table in the first meeting. If they wanted a turnstile, they will say so. If they wanted a named chest, you are in the right room. Do not let a workplace-OS demo steal an hour that should have been a lighting test in your lobby glass.
Coworking and multi-tenant isolation are not our product. One organiser accountable for the window is the assumption. Schools, hospitals, and DBS-heavy sites have extra paper we will not pretend to replace. Ask your own compliance team before you paste a sensitive list into any designer, including ours.
If the board already bought a workplace OS, we can still compile badges from a list that OS prints badly. Replacement is optional. If the board has not bought an OS, do not start with one because a blog said visitor management is mandatory. Start with whether names are wrong on chests.
Joan (Visionect) sells workplace visitor hardware and a broader platform: rooms, desks, signage, integrations. As of September 2026 their ePaper badge shop listed a purchase price with a five-piece minimum and a mandatory visitor-management subscription to use the badge as designed. Their visitor solution FAQ set included a blank security question on the fetch we made. We write our security honesty on the why-use and badge answers instead of leaving a hole.
Envoy and the kiosk cohort sell the glass. Robin and the resource cohort sell the room. We sell the chest for dates you can name, and we will sell door displays when we have a SKU. Until then, no display hire button. Readers who wanted Envoy should go to Envoy. Readers who wanted e-ink hire should stay. Copy’s job is to unmix the search results.
You can sequence vendors. Hire us for the open day. Trial a workplace OS next quarter for doors. Or the reverse. The mistake is using one trial to judge the other job. A thirty-day software sandbox does not put fifty named bezels on a floor this Thursday. A day-rate crate does not test SSO.
We disclose that we operate inkbadgehire.com. Comparisons are first-party opinion plus their public pages. We do not have a first-hand Joan install in our foyer. We will not invent occupancy statistics. We will not clone a seven-persona workplace-CEO page.
Monday: paste twenty-two names, mark visitors and hosts, send magic links. Tuesday: the box is on the table. Bezels already say Priya, Dan, Marcus. Nobody types at the glass. That is pre-registration as we ship it. The dedicated answer is longer. This pillar only needs the clock.
Night-before changes are normal if the kit is still here. After dispatch, the hire window is the remaining lever. A spreadsheet at 23:40 does not create a dawn van. Walk-ins need quantity. Plus-ones need spares. Unnamed Thursday contractors are a small owned tray, not a philosophy.
Kiosk pre-reg still wins for true walk-up traffic every weekday, especially if legal wants a signature at the glass. We are not competing to own that glass. We are removing the glass from mornings where the list was knowable.
Host notification by email or Teams is their feature, not ours, today. If the host must know the guest is in the lift, keep Outlook. Our job is the chest. The NDA can live in the vault you already paid for. We will not fake a document product to look like a VMS datasheet.
A sticker is cheaper than a device until you count reprints, the receptionist’s morning, and the look of a curling label in a client photograph. We will not invent “ten hours back every week.” We will say the queue is shorter when the list was compiled yesterday. Sustainability is the bin: hire returns bezels; paper inserts do not. We are not a certification body and we will not sell a forest.
Brand is taste. Thermal with a logo still looks like thermal. Three-ink e-paper with a simplified mark looks like a device. Handshake distance is our taste. Photo-ID at the glass is a different taste and a different machine.
Security: a named chest is a weak control and a strong introduction. Tailgating is a door. Muster is a fire system. Access control is a token. We will not sell those sentences as if they were e-ink. We will write them so the blank FAQ does not happen here.
Cost on a PO is qty × days × £6 plus postage, or £80 × quantity plus postage to keep. Put the workplace-OS implementation hours on the same sheet if you are comparing honestly. Then pick the object you needed in the first meeting.
This is not /desk-booking/, /parking/, or a signage CMS. This is not an AI agent. This is not thirty city pages. This is not a compare-Joan-versus-Envoy essay until we have first-hand installs to describe. This is not accordion questions marked up as a schema dump.
This is not a door shop. Mounted e-ink lives at /e-ink-displays/ as an engineering essay — no SKU, no checkout. The live hardware pillar is /e-ink-badges/: 250×122, hire or buy. If you need a door that tells the truth about a calendar this week, buy Joan’s room hardware on their site. We will not take your card for a display we cannot post.
This is not a BNI franchise. Featured vertical, first-hand wear, no partnership. Conferences and visitor days share the inks. The visitor-days landing is the event vertical with templates. This hub is the category plus the office clock.
This is not a promise that calendar minting already shipped. If a future page says it did, that page must have a product behind it. Until then, the integrations answer is a spec.
The eight Phase B answers are spokes off this pillar. Each is a question as H1, a 40–55 word lede, then the programming-line version. Accordions on money pages are teasers that point here. We do not mark those teasers up as a question-schema dump.
Read the badge definition if you are still mixing us with a four-colour photo panel. Read how it works if you need ship-state versus lobby-state. Read what a VMS is if search sent you here from a kiosk query. Read pre-registration if your list already exists. Read the small-business answer if you are eight people with a client morning. Read calendar integrations if IT asked about Google. Read why-use if a director asked for benefits. Read hire-as-trial if someone wanted a sandbox instead of a box.
Guides still exist for event sizing, returns, and printed-badge cost. Verticals still exist for conferences, BNI, networking groups, visitor days, and sustainability. This hub does not replace them. It stops the visitor query from bouncing off a chapter-breakfast homepage with no office sentence.
Book dates when the list is real. Design a face first if you need to see the three inks at actual size. Pricing updates live as you change quantity and dates. About names the director, the company, and the pin on the map. Corrections live on About when we get a fact wrong — including dated Joan figures.
Monday: the receptionist (or the person who opens the door) pastes the week’s known visitors into People. Magic links go to the ones who should pick a QR. Faces compile for the owned tray if you bought, or you send a hire request if Thursday is a coach.
Tuesday: chapter morning. We wear this kit. MEMBER and VISITOR bars. Not a partnership. The same 250×122 grid as the client day. If you hired, the crate is on the table. If you bought, the cupboard opened.
Thursday: visitor day. Twenty-five kit or the owned tray plus overflow hire. Guest and host templates. Spares counted. Night-before CSV if the kit is still in Yorkshire.
Friday: return label on hire, or a charge pass on owned cells if faces will refresh next week. The workplace OS you did not buy did not run this week. The chests were still named. That is the hub’s claim, not a hybrid-work poem.
Object: 250×122 e-paper, brick red, black, e-paper white. Operator: ONDRAFT LTD, 17265335, Cleckheaton. Hire formula: qty × days × £6 + £20 postage. Buy: £80 + postage, year one platform, then £30 per month per account. Fulfilment: we compile, we ship, you clip, you return or keep.
Live software: People, events, designer, magic links, team, billing, returns. Not live: Google/Microsoft/booking minting. Not sold: door displays, desks, parking, NDA vault, SSO, access control, BLE lobby as default.
Competitors: Joan and the workplace cohort if you need a weekday kiosk and photo-ID panel. Envoy if you need the glass. Print shops if you need same-day paper next to the venue. Us if you need named e-ink on a date you can put on a van calendar.
Risk: courier time, spelling, walk-ins without spares, late returns blocking the next organiser. Mitigation: book early, count quantity, read how-it-works, email the booking reference when something is wrong. Do not mitigate by inventing a connector we did not ship.
If this brief is too short for a large-firm security questionnaire, say so. We will not pad it with desk-booking answers to look complete. The honest appendix is the eight answer URLs, the terms, and About. Everything else is a different vendor’s catalogue.
SME readers can skip the questionnaire. Open the designer. Book a ten-badge window. Wear it. That path is the whole point of hire-as-trial. Large-firm readers can still take it; the compiler does not fork because the PO is bigger. Quantity is a number, not a different product.
If the list exists, import it and design one guest face and one host face at actual 250×122. If the dates exist, get a hire total on pricing. If IT asked about Google, send them the calendar-integrations answer so they see “not live” in writing. If a director asked why, send why-use, not a workplace lyric.
If you needed a door display, read the engineering essay — no checkout there. If you needed a kiosk every weekday for unknown couriers, look at Joan or Envoy on their sites. If you needed fifty chests on Thursday, book. The visitors hub is the map. The crate is the product.
Answers
Prefer the event landing? Visitor days is the guest and host template page. E-ink badges is the live hardware pillar — specs, box contents, hire and buy. E-ink displays is an engineering essay with no checkout. How it works is the crate loop. Joan for events is the dated comparison. Calendar connectors are not live — read the integrations answer before a tender assumes an OAuth button.