Trade Association Software for the Marine Industry
Industry association software for marine trade associations: member companies, dues, sponsors, conferences and assembly votes on one white-label platform.
Who this is for
- You run a national or regional marine industry or trade association
- Your members are mostly companies: boatbuilders, engine and equipment makers, marinas, shipyards, dealers, service and charter firms
- You organise members into sector sections or regional chapters
- You sell sponsorship packages and run member events, conferences and a general assembly
- Member data still lives in spreadsheets, a generic membership tool or Wild Apricot
A marine trade association is a small team doing the work of a much larger one. It keeps a register of member companies, collects dues, speaks for the sector to government, publishes a directory, sells sponsorship, organises the members' conference and convenes a board and a general assembly that must be run by the statute.
Most trade association software was designed for associations of individuals. A boatbuilder is not one person: it has a managing director who votes, a marketing manager who wants the newsletter, an accounts office that pays the invoice and a technical lead who sits in the engines section. When the tool can only hold one email per member, the association ends up with a spreadsheet next to the software, and the spreadsheet wins.
SupaMaritime Guild is industry association software for this reality: company memberships, sections, dues, sponsors, member events and governance in one place, under the association's own brand. It is a new product, so this page describes what is built today and says plainly what is not.
Where the day breaks down
A member company is reduced to one email address
The managing director, the marketing manager and the accounts office all need different messages. A register with one contact per member sends the dues invoice to the wrong person and the conference invitation to nobody.
Sector sections keep their own lists
The engines section, the marinas section and the charter section each maintain a separate spreadsheet. Nobody is sure which list is current, and a section mailing goes out to companies that left last year.
Dues are chased from a personal inbox
Invoices are issued in the accounting package, reminders are sent by hand and the question of which companies are in good standing is answered the week before the general assembly.
Sponsor benefits are promised, then forgotten
A gold package includes logo placements, banners and conference mentions. At renewal time there is no record of what was delivered and no exposure figures to show the sponsor.
Events run on a separate ticketing tool
Member rates are checked by hand against the register, company delegations register by email and the check-in list is printed the night before, then goes out of date when the venue Wi-Fi drops.
The general assembly runs on paper and PDFs
Attendance is counted at the door, proxies sit in a folder, the quorum is recalculated as delegates arrive and the resolutions register is a Word document with numbering nobody trusts.
Built around the workflow, not bolted on top
Guild keeps every member company, its contacts, its section, its invoices, its event registrations and its sponsorship in one record. The staff work in one console; members, sponsors and the public each see their own view under the association's brand.
Company memberships, tiers and chapters
Person and company memberships with tiers and full history. A company's named contacts reach the company membership from the member portal. Chapters for sector sections or regional delegations, with custom roles and a permission grid.
Dues invoices, renewals and reminders
Dues invoices per membership, card and SEPA payments into the association's own Stripe account, refunds, renewal invoices issued ahead of expiry and reminders before and after the due date.
Sponsor tiers, banners and a sponsor portal
Tiers with a checklist of the benefits owed, banner slots with impressions and clicks, an exposure report PDF and a portal where each sponsor sees only its own package.
Member events and conferences with offline check-in
Sessions, tickets with member pricing, waitlists, group registrations for company delegations, QR tickets and a check-in app that keeps working offline and syncs when the connection returns.
Board and general assembly governance
Bodies and meetings with quorum frozen at opening, attendance with proxy weight, motions, secret ballots with receipts, minutes and a numbered resolutions register. Included in Pro.
Campaigns, board reports and a public directory
Email campaigns segmented by tier, chapter or country from your own sending domain, board reports with year-on-year comparison, and a public directory of member companies with a map.
Illustrative example: a national marine industry association
This is a fictional association used for illustration, not a customer. It has 180 member companies, four sector sections (boatbuilding, engines and equipment, marinas, charter and services), a three-person staff, eight sponsors, an annual members' conference and a general assembly each spring.
Before SupaMaritime
After SupaMaritime
The member register is a spreadsheet with one row per company and one email per row; other contacts live in staff inboxes.
The spreadsheet is imported with a dry run first: companies, contacts, tiers and join dates come in, membership history is rebuilt and the import can be undone within 24 hours.
Each sector section keeps its own mailing list, and the chair of the marinas section asks staff to forward every message.
The four sections are set up as chapters; section mailings are campaigns segmented by chapter, sent from the association's own domain.
Dues invoices go out from the accounting package in January; reminders are written one by one and good standing is checked by hand before the assembly.
Renewal invoices are issued ahead of expiry, members pay by card or SEPA and scheduled reminders go out before and after the due date; the board home shows who is in grace.
Sponsors receive a PDF with their benefits at signature; in November nobody can say how many banner impressions the gold sponsors actually received.
Each sponsor package carries its benefit checklist; banners run on the portal and the public directory, and each sponsor downloads its exposure report from the sponsor portal.
The conference uses a separate ticketing site; member rates are verified manually and company delegations send names by email.
The conference is a Guild event with sessions, member and non-member tickets and group registrations for company delegations; QR check-in at the door keeps working when the venue Wi-Fi drops.
At the general assembly, proxies are collected on paper, quorum is recounted twice and resolutions are numbered in a Word file after the meeting.
At the assembly, attendance and proxies are recorded before opening, the quorum is frozen, a secret ballot gives each voter a receipt, and the resolution gets the next number in the register.
Facts you can check
Sector sections or regional delegations as chapters: none on Free, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Enterprise.
Every import runs as a dry run first and can be rolled back within 24 hours, restoring the previous values row by row.
Pro includes three staff seats for €199 per month, with extra seats at €25 per month each. Members and sponsors do not use seats.
The check-in app queues scans without a connection and replays them safely when it returns, so a busy entrance never waits for Wi-Fi.
Trade association software built around member companies
The unit of a marine trade association is the member company, not the individual. Dues are paid by the company, voting rights usually belong to the company, and the directory lists the company. The people behind it change: a new marketing manager arrives, the managing director retires, the accounts office moves.
Guild stores companies and people as separate records linked by a membership. A company membership has a tier, a period, a status and a full history of renewals, and the company's contacts reach it from the member portal to update the profile, download invoices and pay. Chapters let the association group members into sector sections or regional delegations, and campaigns and reports can be filtered by chapter.
Associations define their own member fields for the data only they collect, such as product categories or yard capacity, and choose which profile edits wait for staff approval before they reach the public directory.
Sponsors and member events without a second tool
Sponsorship is often the second revenue line of an industry association, and renewals depend on proving what was delivered. In Guild each package is created from a tier whose benefits become a checklist with due dates, delivery notes and evidence. Banners run in defined slots, impressions and clicks are counted, and the exposure report is a PDF the sponsor can download from its own portal.
Member events and conferences run on the same member records. Tickets can be restricted or priced for members, company delegations register as a group, attendees get QR tickets and calendar files, and staff see statistics per session compared with the previous edition. The check-in app works offline at the door and on a self-service kiosk.
One boundary matters for this audience. Guild covers member events and conferences today. Large boat-show and trade-fair features such as exhibitor management, printed badges, wallet passes, lead capture and matchmaking are not available yet.
Board and general assembly governance that stands up to scrutiny
A general assembly decision is only as good as the record behind it. Guild records attendance before the meeting opens, including the weight each delegate carries through proxies, and freezes the quorum at the moment of opening, so whether the meeting was quorate cannot drift afterwards.
Motions can be open or secret. On a secret ballot the board can count every vote but cannot see who cast which one; each voter gets a receipt, nobody can vote twice and ballots cannot be edited or deleted. Minutes are saved against the meeting and locked once approved, and resolutions go into a register numbered by year.
Governance is part of the Pro plan and is run from the staff console. A member-facing voting page in the member portal is not available yet, and convening a meeting notifies only the console users who can see governance: a formal notice to the whole membership is not sent automatically.
Software for marine trade associations: communications, reporting and migration
Communications staff need to reach the right people inside member companies. Guild campaigns are built on a segment by tier, chapter or country, respect each person's consent at send time, track opens and clicks, and leave from the association's own verified sending domain on Pro. Campaigns are email only today.
For the board, Guild reports membership growth, renewals and lapses over time with a year-on-year comparison, exportable as CSV on every plan and as PDF on Pro. The public directory lists member companies with a map and a contact form that never exposes their addresses, and can be embedded on the existing website.
Moving from Wild Apricot or spreadsheets starts with an import that recognises Wild Apricot exports, previews every row in a dry run and can be undone within 24 hours. The platform runs white-label on the association's own domain, and a full export in open formats is available on every plan.
How this compares to the alternatives
Membership management software widely used by small associations and non-profits; Guild's importer recognises its member export.
Association management software positioned for chambers of commerce and trade associations.
All-in-one platform for associations and chambers covering membership, events and CRM.
Frequently asked questions
What is trade association software?
How is software for marine trade associations different from a generic membership tool?
Can Guild manage boat shows and trade-fair exhibitors?
Can members vote online from their own portal?
How do we migrate from Wild Apricot or spreadsheets?
Can the platform carry our association's brand and domain?
How much does Guild cost for a trade association?
Who owns the data, and can we take it with us?
See it in your workflow, not a generic demo
We'll walk through built for marine trade associations.
Start on the Free plan; Pro is €199 per month with governance, board PDF reports and your own domain. Enterprise on request.