Hire as trial
Hire is the trial. You pay a published day-rate, wear programmed badges on real dates, and send them back. There is no 30-day workplace operating system sitting on a credit card. If you then want to keep hardware, buy at the listed device price.
Quantity × calendar days × £6 per badge, plus £20 postage out and back. Ten badges for two days is £140 including postage. Fifty badges for one conference day is £320 hire plus £20 postage. Deposits on kit sizes hold a slot; they are not the full fee.
Buy is £80 per device plus £20 postage once. Year one of the account platform is included, then £30 per month per account. Unused consumer purchases can be cancelled within 14 days of delivery under the terms.
Card checkout runs when Stripe is configured; otherwise we invoice after a booking request. A request is not a reservation until we confirm dates.
A 30-day workplace trial tests admin screens, calendar room resources, and whether IT will approve another SaaS. It does not put fifty named bezels on a conference floor this Thursday unless the hardware also arrived.
Joan’s visitor page offers thirty days without a credit card, and the badge shop has advertised a 30-day refund with a five-piece minimum — as of September 2026. Those are honest motions for a platform company. They are not a day-rate hire crate.
We would rather you pay a small, boring number and wear the physics. If the three inks fail in your lighting, you return the kit. That is a better trial than a sandbox tenant.
Door displays: no public SKU on this site, so no display hire CTA. NDA vaults, muster apps, SSO, BLE lobby push: not the trial. Magic links and the designer: yes.
BNI partnership: not a thing. We feature a chapter we sit in.
Book a ten-badge window. Design faces. Wear them. Return the box. Decide whether weekly cadence wants buy. The small-business answer is the sibling.
Pilot a floor with hire, then buy the core. Overflow hire for the annual visitor day. Do not sign a workplace OS to discover whether e-ink reads in your lobby glass.
Volume still uses the same £6 day-rate until you switch to buy. Email hire@inkbadgehire.com for dispatch dates above the usual kits.
Pricing updates live as you change quantity and dates. How badges work explains what arrives in the box. The visitors hub is the pillar if you are still deciding office versus event.
Charged badges, names on the 250×122 face, white bezels, role bars as designed, QR if you added it, prepaid return on hire. Not a sandbox tenant. Not a sales engineer. Not a webinar. A box.
What you do not receive: automatic spares, a foyer printer, a legal vault, a fire-marshal dashboard, a 6-inch door display. Those absences are the point of a hardware trial. You learn whether the object works in your light, on your people, with your greeter.
If Stripe is live, you can pay by card. If it is not, you get an invoice from the operator inbox. Either way the physics is the same. Do not treat an unpaid request as a hold on the programming calendar.
Consumer cooling-off on unused purchases is in the terms. Hire is a dated service. You cannot keep hired units because you liked them; you buy if you want custody. Missing hired units are charged as replacement. That is how a shared fleet stays a shared fleet.
A software trial is the right shape if you are testing room resources, SSO, and whether staff will book from Teams. A hardware refund is the right shape if you are testing a five-badge tray in a permanent lobby. A day-rate hire is the right shape if you have named dates and a courier path from Yorkshire.
You can sequence them. 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.
We will not offer a free crate as a default. Postage and programming are real. The published hire total is already the smallest honest experiment we can run without lying about costs. If a future promotion exists, it will be on pricing with a date, not as folklore in this answer.
After a successful hire, buy is available on checkout. Year one of platform included. Then thirty pounds per month per account. That is the conversion from trial-by-hire to ownership. It is not a dark pattern. It is the two SKUs we already print on the homepage.
Ten badges, two days, one hundred and forty pounds including postage: the chapter-table experiment we print on the homepage. You learn lighting, spelling, greeter habit, and whether red on the role bar earns its keep.
Twenty-five badges, one visitor morning: one hundred and seventy pounds including postage. You learn whether the coach list was honest and whether three spares were enough. That is a better experiment than a thirty-day software sandbox with no crate.
Fifty badges, one conference day: three hundred and forty pounds including postage. You learn foyer flow without a printer. You do not learn SSO. Do not score the experiment on SSO.
Buy five devices if the experiment is “will we wear these every week.” Eighty pounds times five plus postage, year one of platform included. That is closer to Joan’s hardware-plus-refund motion, except the film is 250×122 three-ink and the fulfilment is Yorkshire, not a five-piece workplace shop minimum.
As of September 2026, Joan’s visitor solution public page offered a thirty-day trial without a credit card for the software motion. The ePaper badge shop has advertised a hardware refund window and a five-piece minimum, with a mandatory visitor-management subscription to use the badge as designed. Those are their terms. Read them on getjoan.com. They change.
Our trial is a dated hire. The credit card or invoice is real because postage and programming are real. We will not match a zero-pound SaaS trial by pretending vans are free.
A refund on unused consumer goods is in our terms where the law requires it. A hire window that was used is a service that happened. Do not treat a completed visitor morning as an unused toaster.
If you need to see the designer before you pay, open it. The 250×122 preview is the film. A sandbox tenant that does not compile a bezel is a different kind of trial. Use it for software. Use us for hardware.
Pick the smallest quantity that still looks like your room. One badge tests the film in your light. Ten badges tests a table. Twenty-five tests a foyer with a short list. Fifty tests a floor. Do not hire fifty to learn whether red is readable. That is a one-badge question.
Pick dates that are real. A hire window on empty calendar days still occupies the programming queue and a crate. If the morning might cancel, say so before we compile. Terms cover what happens when dates move. This answer is not the contract.
Measure three things on the day: did names match, did greeters clip without a queue, did anything crack in the box. That is the trial readout. SSO, desk maps, and room auto-release will not appear on that readout because they are not in the box.
If the readout is good, buy or book the next window. If it is bad, tell us. Lighting, type size, and packing are things we can change. A workplace OS you did not want is not something we can refund because you hired the wrong category.
Postage from West Yorkshire is money. Programming time is money. Charged cells and foam are money. A zero-pound trial would hide those costs in a subscription you meet later. We would rather you see the number on pricing before you meet us.
Joan can offer a software trial without a crate because their trial is screens. Their hardware shop is a separate motion with a minimum order and a subscription to make the badge useful. Different physics, different free.
We will not match free by shipping blank badges and calling you a beta. Blank badges are not the product. Named film is the product. Naming has a compile cost.
After you have paid once, you know the loop. The second hire is faster because the faces and the account already exist. That is the compounding, not a points scheme. Buy when the cupboard makes more sense than the label.
A conference organiser who hires fifty once has already run the experiment at floor scale. The next decision is whether next year’s dates want another crate or a cupboard. We will not convert you in a pop-up. Pricing and checkout are the same two SKUs as the homepage. That is the whole trial-to-keep path.
If the crate arrives and the lighting is a nightclub, you learned the medium was wrong. Return it. Do not stay in a software trial hoping the physics will change. E-paper is reflective. We said that on the badge definition page. The hire invoice is how you tested it in your actual hall.