Start with the page you need to ship and where its visitors come from. A page for paid search ads, a waitlist for a product that isn't built yet, a lead form for a webinar and a bio link for an Instagram profile are different jobs, and the tools here are usually built around one of them.
Then decide where the page should live. Hosted builders publish to their own servers on a subdomain such as go.yourbrand.com. WordPress and Shopify page builders put the page inside the site you already run, on the same domain and with the same login. Link-in-bio tools often keep the page on their own address unless you pay to connect a domain. Each choice affects branding, page speed, analytics setup and how hard it is to move later.
Look at the form before the design. Most landing pages exist to collect something: an email address, a booking, a payment or a qualified lead. Check that the form connects directly to the email tool or CRM you already use, that it can carry campaign details such as the ad source into each record, and that you can see what happens after someone submits.
Treat AI features as a first draft. Page generators can produce a layout and copy from a short prompt, and copy tools can write headlines by the dozen. They save time on the blank page. They don't know your customers, your offer or the claims you can legally make, so someone who does should edit every line before the page goes live.
Ask how you will know whether the page works. Some builders include A/B testing so you can compare two versions with real traffic. Others give only basic visit counts, and you add an analytics or heatmap tool yourself. If you plan to test, check that the tool can split traffic the way you need and that you will get enough visitors for a result to mean something.
Check speed on a phone. A large share of campaign traffic comes from mobile ads and social apps, and a slow or cramped page loses people before they read the headline. Build a test page, open it on a mid-range phone over a normal connection, and look at how quickly the first screen appears.
Finally, think about what you will do with the page after the campaign. Some teams publish many short-lived pages and want quick templates. Others keep a few pages running for years and care more about editing, versioning and exports. Pick the tool that fits how often you build, not only how the first page looks.