Will my boat fit? Is there a waitlist? What does a season cost?
Answered before the phone rings.
Clix builds interactive tools into marina websites, so boaters find the slip that fits, join a waitlist with a place in line, and see what it costs without calling.
Live demo. No login. Demo data for a fictional three-marina group.
The research behind it
- 35 marina operator groups reviewed and ranked
- 384 marina records in the operator research
- 2,440 marinas in the source dataset
- 13 criteria in the scoring model
Clix research, October and November 2026. These figures describe our review of the market, not client results.
01 The premise
The best marina on the lake should be the easiest one to find, believe, and lease.
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Answered before the phone rings.
Will my boat fit, is there a waitlist, what does a season cost: the three questions that fill a marina’s phone, answered on the site, on a phone, at 11pm.
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Built once, shown everywhere.
One slip finder, one waitlist, one rate card, managed in one place and rendered on every marina’s site under that marina’s own brand. When the next marina joins the group, it gets the tools on day one.
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Next to what you already run.
The tools embed in the site you have, on the CMS you have, and hand qualified requests to the booking system you have. If an agency built your site, they keep building it.
02 The tool layer
Eight tools. One rate card. Every marina.
Each one replaces a question your dock office answers by phone all season. Try them on Clix Harbor Marinas, our fictional three-marina group.
See all tools and the operator view-
Slip Finder
Enter a boat’s length and beam and see which slips fit, where, and what they cost. -
Waitlist
Join the waitlist for the slip you want and see your place in line. -
Cost Calculator
Price a season, a year, or a month, with power, lift, and winter storage. -
Lake and Ramp Status
Lake level, ramp status, and fuel dock hours before a boater leaves home. -
Wet vs Dry Explorer
Compare a wet slip and dry stack for one boat: cost, convenience, protection. -
Winterization Quote
Price winterization and storage, and reserve a place in the haul-out line. -
Boat-Fit for Buyers
For buyers: which slips a boat fits and what a year of keeping it costs. -
Portfolio Demand ViewOperator view
Open slips, waitlist depth, and unmet demand by boat size, across the group.
03 For marina groups
One build. Every property. Every acquisition.
The largest groups we reviewed run a separate website for every marina, sometimes dozens of domains on one template, sometimes four marinas on four platforms with no group site at all. The tool layer is one slip finder, one waitlist, and one rate card, rendered on every site under that marina’s own brand.
Portfolio Demand View
Clix Harbor Marinas · demo data · last 30 days
- Open slips
- 90
- Waitlist depth
- 85
- Classes with unmet demand
- 13
- Requests
- 232
| Where demand exceeds inventory | Waiting |
|---|---|
| 18 waiting for 40 ft covered at Tern Hollow 6 open 40 ft uncovered at Juniper Narrows: offer routing. | 18 |
| 14 waiting for 32 ft covered at Tern Hollow 1 open 32 ft covered lift at Tern Hollow: offer routing. | 14 |
| 11 waiting for 36 ft covered at Tern Hollow 1 open 36 ft uncovered at Tern Hollow: offer routing. | 11 |
| 9 waiting for 28 ft covered at Tern Hollow 3 open 28 ft uncovered at Tern Hollow: offer routing. | 9 |
| 6 waiting for 45 ft covered at Tern Hollow 1 open 45 ft uncovered at Juniper Narrows: offer routing. | 6 |
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Every property keeps its brand.
The tool layer is set up under each marina’s own name and colors. Nothing about the property’s identity changes.
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Acquisitions go live on day one.
Its rate card, slip classes, and current waitlist go into the group admin. Nothing is rebuilt.
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Demand by boat size, across the group.
Open slips, waitlist depth, and the slip classes where demand outruns inventory, in one view.
04 The 5 Gap Framework
Five gaps stand between a boater and your slip.
Boaters don’t decide on Google alone. They decide once they start checking you out. The framework shows where, between “I need a slip” and “I’m leasing here,” a boater is lost.
What we do at each step- Discovery
Visibility
Can boaters find you?
- Evaluation
Message
Does your site say which marina this is, or just that it is a marina?
- Evaluation
Trust
Are you externally validated?
- Connection
Connection
Can they experience the marina before they drive out?
- Conversion
Conversion
Can a boater act without calling?
The default decision
When the gaps stay open, boaters still decide; they decide on the wrong variables: the closest ramp to home, the cheapest slip, whoever answered the phone first, and whoever happened to have a slip open that day.
05 What we found
The slip request still goes to the phone or a PDF.
From our November 2026 review of 35 marina groups and 384 marina records.
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We did not find a single marina site where a boater could enter a boat length and see which slips fit.
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Not one of the 35 groups had a cost calculator of any kind.
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Roughly one group in six had any online waitlist, and where one existed it was usually a form on a single property, not a system across the group.
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Several groups still run slip, rack, and winter storage applications as PDFs or by phone.
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In single mobile lab runs, more than half the group sites we tested scored below 60, and a largest-content paint over ten seconds was common.
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We also found an empty locations page, a weather widget stuck at zero degrees, and a contact link that opened a thank-you page. Boaters notice. So do we.
Website reviews run November 2, 2026. Performance figures are single mobile lab runs and indicative only.
06 The math of your market
Occupancy is high, costs are rising, and growth comes from the slip holder you keep and the slip you fill with the right boat.
- Median marina occupancy reported in the Marina Dock Age 2025 Annual Survey. 1
- 92%
- Of surveyed marinas expecting operating expenses to rise. 1
- 78%
- Raised slip rates in the survey year. 1
- 36%
A marina at 92 percent occupancy does not need more phone calls. It needs the six open slips filled with boats that fit, the waitlist for the 40-foot covered slips turned into a list with dimensions and dates, the winterization revenue that walks to the yard down the road, and the next marina in the group brought online without starting from zero.
1 Marina Dock Age 2025 Annual Survey, fielded September to November 2025, published early 2026. Survey figures as reported; sample size not stated in the article.
07 The assessment
Find your biggest gap in about two minutes.
- Pinpoints the gap costing you the most slip requests right now.
- Gives you the next two or three things to fix.
- No email wall, no sales call, no 80-page PDF.
08 Why this exists
If the dock office is answering the same four questions all season, the fix is not more staff. It is a website that answers them.
Built for marinas by people who kept finding the same five things on marina websites.
We started with a dataset of 2,440 marinas for a boat-lift client and ended up reading hundreds of marina websites. The same things kept appearing: rate sheets as PDFs, waitlists by phone, four marinas on four platforms, and a slip request that still needed a person to pick up. The 5 Gap Framework came from the same pattern in veterinary practices. The tool layer came from what marina websites were missing.
Meet the people behind itStart with the tools