The Marina Software Buyer's Guide
How It Makes (and Loses) You Money
Billing models, transaction fees, and the revenue your software should be capturing
Money moves in two directions through your software: out to the vendor, and in from your customers. Most buyers only watch the first one, and only the most visible part of it. This chapter is about the parts you don't watch, the transaction fees that dwarf the monthly bill, and the revenue quietly leaking out of your own operation.
Two directions money moves
This dimension is about money in both directions. What the software costs you, and what it collects for you. Both belong in the same conversation, because the right way to judge a platform financially is the net of the two, not either one alone.
Almost nobody evaluates it that way. The buyer fixes on the monthly platform fee, picks the lower one, and moves on. That fee is usually the smallest and least interesting number in the whole deal.
The monthly platform fee is the one number that matters least, and the only one most buyers compare.
So we'll take the two directions in turn: first the cost the vendor doesn't put on the price tag, then the revenue your operation is leaking whether you switch or not.
The cost that isn't on the price tag
Vendors compete on the monthly platform fee because it's the number you'll line up side by side. The real cost lives in three places that are harder to compare, which is exactly why they're where the money is.
| Billing model | How it scales | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Per slip or per linear foot | With the size of your marina, not your revenue. Predictable. | Fair and easy to forecast. The cleanest model for most operations. |
| Per transaction or per booking | With your volume and revenue. Cheap when small, expensive at scale. | A small platform fee hiding a percentage of every booking you take. |
| Payment processing markup | With every card you run, on top of the above. | A markup above interchange that the quote may not spell out. Ask for the all-in rate. |
Per-booking pricing isn't a scam. For a very low-volume marina it can be the cheapest option, because you pay almost nothing when little is happening. The problem is that it is back-loaded: the more successful you are, the more it takes. Here is the math the brochure won't run for you.
A marina taking 2,000 transient bookings a year at an $80 average, on a platform that charges 3% per booking:
2,000 × $80 × 3% = $4,800 / year
That's transaction fees alone, before the platform fee, before processing markup. A competitor that's $200 a month "more expensive" on the platform fee is $2,400 a year more, and just saved you the other $4,800. The cheap option was the expensive one.
The three-quote test
You met this test in Chapter 1. Here's why it's the whole ballgame for this dimension. Don't compare monthly fees. Ask every vendor for total annual cost at three volumes:
- At your current volume. The real number for where you are today.
- At double your transient revenue. What growth costs you under their model.
- At half. What a soft season does to the bill.
The shape of those three numbers tells you the model without the vendor having to admit it. A flat line is a platform fee. A line that climbs steeply with volume is a percentage dressed up as a platform. You want to know which one you're signing, because you're signing it for years.
Send every vendor the same one-line request: "Give me total annual cost, all fees included, at my current transient volume, at double, and at half." Put the three answers from each vendor in one table. The vendor who resists giving you all three is telling you something.
Chapter 14 takes the pricing models apart in detail, and Chapter 16's total-cost calculator does the full economic comparison once you have real quotes in hand.
Where money escapes inside your operation
The cost side is only half of it. Software also decides how much of the revenue you're owed actually reaches your account. This is the half buyers almost never price, and it usually dwarfs the platform fee. Money escapes in four predictable places.
| Where it escapes | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Uncollected late fees | No automatic dunning, so late fees go uncharged and overdue balances go unchased. Revenue you're entitled to, never billed. |
| Untracked fuel margins | Fuel sales that don't reconcile against deliveries, so shrinkage, pricing errors, and pump discrepancies go unnoticed. |
| Transient pricing inflexibility | Can't raise rates for a holiday weekend or an event, so you sell premium nights at ordinary prices. |
| Slip turnover billing gaps | A slip changes hands mid-season and the proration is wrong, missed, or done by hand and forgotten. |
Each of these is money you already earned and simply didn't collect. Good software closes the gaps automatically: it charges the late fee, flags the fuel variance, lets you set a holiday rate, and prorates the turnover without anyone remembering to. That recovered revenue is real, and it belongs in the financial comparison right next to the fees.
Revenue leakage calculator
Estimate your late-fee collection rate, fuel reconciliation accuracy, and slip-turnover billing precision. See the annual revenue your current setup is leaking, and what tighter software would recover.
Software that pays for itself
Put the two directions together and the real financial question comes into focus. It isn't "which platform fee is lower." It's this: what does each platform cost me in fees, all in, and how much of my leaking revenue does it recover? The answer is a net number, and the net number is frequently positive, meaning the better software is cheaper than the cheaper software once you count what it collects.
Judge this dimension on the net, not the monthly fee. Add up all the fees (platform, per-booking, processing) at your real volume, then subtract the revenue better software would recover from late fees, fuel margin, pricing, and turnover. The platform fee is the decoy. The net is the decision.
Chapter 14 goes deep on the pricing models, and Chapter 16 turns this net thinking into a full total-cost-of-ownership comparison once you're weighing real vendors against each other.
What it shows you: reporting and visibility
The third dimension. Whether you can actually see what's happening in your marina clearly enough to act on it, instead of running the place on instinct and last month's spreadsheet.
Read Chapter 7 →References and further reading
- Sharper MMS, Map the Switch Migration Assessment
- Association of Marina Industries (AMI), industry research and benchmark data. marinaassociation.org
- Storable Marine, AMI, and Marina Dock Age, Navigating the Numbers: 2026 Marina Operator Insights & Technology Automation