What is a visitor sign-in system?

A visitor sign-in system is the digital replacement for the paper visitor book at reception: a tablet or kiosk where visitors enter their name, who they're seeing and the company they represent, optionally take a photo, sign an NDA or health-and-safety acknowledgment, and trigger an automatic notification to the host via Teams, email or SMS. A printer attached to the kiosk produces a wearable badge, and the visitor record drops into a digital log that doubles as the fire-evacuation roll call.

Two tiers of product cover most UK deployments. Single-feature sign-in apps like Sign In App, Inventry, Pronestor and Receptive run on an iPad with a stand and badge printer; pricing typically lands at £50 to £100 per site per month for the software, plus £400 to £700 one-off for the hardware. They handle the basics well: log visitors, notify hosts, print badges, evacuation lists. Full visitor management platforms like iLobby, Envoy, GoBright Visit and Robin Visitors add pre-registration via QR code emails, watchlist screening, contractor inductions, multi-site reporting and integration with access control. These run £150 to £500 per site per month plus hardware.

For most UK offices a single-feature sign-in deployment covers 90% of what reception actually needs. The platforms most often deployed by Strive AV's clients are Sign In App and Inventry, both UK-built with UK support. They run on a 10-inch iPad on a counter stand with a Brother QL-820 thermal badge printer; total install (software, hardware, configuration, induction question setup) is typically half a day per site. Where the brief is full enterprise visitor management with security screening or multi-tenant buildings, a visitor management platform replaces it.

Quick reference: tablet or kiosk replacing the paper visitor book; captures visitor details, photo, NDA sign-off, prints a badge and notifies the host; basic single-feature sign-in apps (Sign In App, Inventry) cover most UK offices, full visitor management platforms (iLobby, Envoy, GoBright Visit, Robin Visitors) add pre-registration, watchlist screening and access-control integration.