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Part of How to review landing page software with the unknowns kept in plain sight
Selecting landing page software with a manual baseline as the control
A practical landing page software selection checklist covering journey evidence, privacy, security, accessibility, contracts and a manual baseline.
Use this landing page software selection checklist for one declared England journey, not to pick a brand in the abstract. The reviewer is the FunnelBench procurement editor role, individual unassigned.
The checklist was compiled from public records and supplier documentation, and it is written as a template to complete against your own account. No account, form, export, accessibility journey or security setting was tested for this article, no support service was tested and no supplier relationship is recorded.
What to take away
- A manual baseline is not automatically free or safe, but it prevents a subscription from becoming the assumed result.
- Set a pass threshold, for example 80 per cent of weighted must-have criteria, and a budget ceiling before reviewing quotes.
- Mark a fact unknown when the proposed order or current record does not answer it.
- A supplier badge or policy does not replace the buyer's own configuration and recovery test.
- Privacy, PECR, security, accessibility, claims, contract and exit stay as independent gates.
- A completed checklist documents a process and does not guarantee compliance, performance or suitability.
Decision and baseline
- State the page purpose, eligible visitors, data fields, acquisition route and intended outcome.
- Name the operators, approver, evidence owner and person authorised to stop publication.
- Describe the current CMS, static page or manual routing option using the same scope.
- Confirm the pass threshold and budget ceiling set in the takeaway against this journey.
The baseline must include current hosting, staff work, defect handling and exit.
Baseline options to compare
- Spreadsheet and manual entrystaff type or paste each lead into a CRM or shared inbox, with no automation on the page.
- Static HTML pagea single page hosted with the existing site, posting to a form endpoint and an email address.
- Existing CMS pagea template inside the CMS the team already runs, using its forms, roles and backups.
- Record the staff time, hosting cost, change effort, defect history and exit route for each option against the same scope fields as the proposed product.
Baseline scope before approval
- Page purpose, visitors, data fields, outcome
- Operators, approver, evidence owner, stop authority
- Current CMS, static page or manual routing
- Weights, thresholds and budget left blank
- Include hosting, staff work, defects, exit
Product and commercial identity
- Record supplier legal name, exact product, plan or edition, contracting entity and order route.
- Capture source URL, document date, evidence owner and expiry for every material statement.
- Verify currency, VAT basis, unit, billing period, minimum term, limits, overage and renewal before recording a price.
- Obtain change, support, liability, termination, domain, IP, export, deletion and transition terms.
Do not copy a price or feature from a different region or plan.
Example product categories include standalone landing page builders such as Unbounce, Instapage and Leadpages, funnel platforms such as ClickFunnels and Kartra, and all-in-one suites such as HubSpot and Mailchimp. Apply the same checklist to each before choosing, and add any supplier already on your shortlist to the same table.
Unbounce
- Price and VAT for minimum term
- Unknown
- Data export and restore
- Not tested
- Accessibility conformance
- Not tested
- PECR storage and access review
- Unknown
ClickFunnels
- Price and VAT for minimum term
- Unknown
- Data export and restore
- Not tested
- Accessibility conformance
- Not tested
- PECR storage and access review
- Unknown
HubSpot
- Price and VAT for minimum term
- Unknown
- Data export and restore
- Not tested
- Accessibility conformance
- Not tested
- PECR storage and access review
- Unknown
Record each cell as verified, supplier-stated, not tested or unknown after your own checks.
Landing-page and lead-capture criteria
- Templates and blocks for the page types you publish, and how much design control the team needs.
- Native A/B testing, split tests and whether tests can run on your own domain.
- Form fields, validation, conditional logic, spam handling and confirmation emails.
- Lead routingwhich CRM, email platform or automation tool each captured lead reaches, such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp or Zapier.
- Email deliverabilitysending domain, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, whether sending runs through the platform or a service such as Postmark or SendGrid, and who owns each record.
- Custom domains, SSL and whether pages sit on a subdomain or the main site domain.
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals for the hosted templates you would actually publish.
- Visitor, pageview, contact, seat and workspace limits, plus overage and upgrade rules.
Name the destination for every captured lead before you compare suppliers. A funnel platform may include its own CRM, while a standalone builder usually depends on a native integration or a connector such as Zapier to hand leads to HubSpot, Salesforce or Mailchimp.
Page and data journey
- Run identical fictional content from draft through approval, publication, correction and withdrawal.
- Test form labels, validation, error recovery, confirmation, routing and duplicate handling.
- Map each personal-data purpose, source, field, recipient, retention period and deletion route.
- Identify controller and processor roles from the actual decisions, not supplier labels.
- Review tags, pixels and device storage or access separately from form collection.
The ICO's final April 2026 storage and access guidance explains the current PECR framework for such technologies. Its controller-processor contract guidance is marked under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. Qualified reviewers must apply current rules to the configured journey.
Decide and record the lawful basis for the journey under the UK GDPR. Where the buyer is a controller, record the ICO data protection fee registration and keep the entry on the ICO's register of fee payers up to date, and complete a data protection impact assessment where the capture involves profiling or large-scale special category data.
Security, access and recovery
- List normal, privileged, agency and service identities, then apply least privilege.
- Verify authentication, offboarding, audit logs, incident contacts and notification routes.
- Export the required records and prove that the buyer can read and restore them elsewhere.
- Rehearse rollback, supplier outage, account compromise and contract exit.
Use the NCSC's SaaS security guidance to frame customer-side configuration and recovery questions.
Accessibility and claims
- Test the complete page with keyboard, zoom, assistive technology and error correction.
- Record browser, viewport, tester, WCAG criterion, defect, fix and retest evidence.
- Link every objective marketing claim to approved, current substantiation.
- Check that qualifications and disclosures remain clear in the final page and acquisition channel.
W3C's WCAG 2.2 Recommendation supplies technical criteria, while the ASA's substantiation guidance addresses documentary evidence for objective advertising claims. Neither source certifies a product or completed page.
Decision record
- Label each row verified for scope, supplier-stated, not tested or unknown.
- Record rejected options, unresolved evidence, conditions, owners and the next review date.
- Choose onlycontrolled test, request evidence, retain baseline or stop.
Worked example rows:
| Fact | Label | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Current hosting cost | Verified | Invoice dated 1 August 2026 |
| Uptime claim | Supplier-stated | Supplier status page, checked 6 September 2026 |
| Accessibility conformance | Not tested | No audit run |
| Data retention period | Unknown | Proposed order silent |
Before purchase or publication, named procurement, commercial, data-protection, PECR, security, accessibility and measurement reviewers should sign their relevant gates. Reopen every link and repeat expired tests.
Common questions
What should the baseline include?
The baseline is the current manual or existing process you already operate. Record it with the same scope fields you would use for the proposed product. That lets you compare like with like.
How should a price be recorded?
Verify currency, VAT basis, unit, billing period, minimum term, limits, overage and renewal before recording a price. Capture source URL, document date, evidence owner and expiry for every material statement.
For budget guidance, set a ceiling that covers VAT for the full minimum term and any overage you expect. Public list prices for Unbounce, ClickFunnels and HubSpot vary by plan and billing period, so ask for a current quote and record it as supplier-stated until a contract confirms it.
What are the final decision options?
Choose only controlled test, request evidence, retain baseline or stop. Before purchase or publication, named procurement, commercial, data-protection, PECR, security, accessibility and measurement reviewers should sign their relevant gates. Apply the pass threshold from the takeaway before you choose.
Reopen every link and repeat expired tests, then record rejected options and the next review date. A controlled test means a limited live run with the same data fields and exit path.
