If you route pharma websites through MLR review, you have probably used Veeva Web2PDF. It crawls a site from its sitemap and renders it to a PDF that reviewers can annotate in Vault, and it is free. On a site that already carries Veeva Hints markup, and within its crawl limits, it does the job.
The search for an alternative usually starts the first time a project manager has to capture a forty-page site at desktop and mobile widths before a review milestone, and then do it again at the next one. This guide covers what to look for, the realistic options, and where each fits. It is written by RouteShot, so read the last option as our own case. The rest is meant to be fair, and if any detail is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
Why teams look past Web2PDF
The complaints are consistent across agencies, and they are about scope rather than quality.
- Crawl limits, every milestone. A crawl stops at 25 pages for non-subscribers or 100 for Vault subscribers, at 2 or 20 crawls per hour. A site over the limit is split into several crawls or trimmed with a custom sitemap, and that work repeats at every review milestone.
- Markup on the site. Hints are optional, but dynamic content and the ISI render correctly only when the page carries them:
data-vv-isi="true"on the page,data-vv-actionon each element to click, and so on. That is developer time on every site, and a coordination step between the agency and whoever owns the build. - Viewports. Review teams increasingly want the mobile rendering alongside desktop, full-page and above-the-fold. A single render does not give you that.
- ISI handling. Pharma pages carry Important Safety Information, often in a sticky tray that covers content in a naive full-page capture. Reviewers need the expanded state and the in-flow ISI at the bottom of the page, and they need them consistently.
- No record of what ran. When a reviewer asks what was captured, at what width, from which URL set, on which date, the answer lives in someone’s memory or in a folder name.
None of these is a flaw in Web2PDF for the job it was built for. They are the gaps that show up when the job is a whole site, repeatedly.
What to look for in an alternative
Judge any option against the actual review workflow, not a feature list.
- Whole-site scope. Can it discover the pages from the sitemap or a URL list and capture them all in one run?
- No changes to the site. Can it capture a staging site as it is, including behind HTTP basic auth, without markup or a plugin?
- Standardized viewports. Does everyone capture at the same desktop and mobile widths, so two reviews are comparable?
- ISI and consent states. Does it handle a sticky ISI tray and capture the expanded state? Does it capture the cookie banner and its settings panel as their own artifacts?
- An audit trail. Does it record who ran the capture, when, against which URLs, with a per-page outcome?
If an option fails the first point, it is a per-page tool and the work of assembling a review set stays with the project manager.
The options
1. Keep using Web2PDF
Web2PDF remains the right call when the client’s Vault has it configured, the site already carries Hints markup, and the page count sits inside the crawl limit. The PDF lands straight in the review flow, reviewers expect a Vault-native rendition, and it costs nothing.
2. Browser extensions
Full-page screenshot extensions are free or nearly free and need no setup. They capture whatever the browser window is showing, one page at a time, at whatever width the window happens to be. That last part is the problem for review: two people produce two different sets, and there is no record of either. They fit a one-off capture, not a milestone.
3. Annotation tools
Tools such as Red Box Annotation are built for marking up a page for feedback. They produce annotated screenshots per page, typically through a browser extension, at a low monthly price. They are useful in the feedback loop after review starts, and they do not address the capture set that has to exist before it does.
4. An in-house script
Teams with a developer on hand sometimes write a Playwright or Puppeteer script that walks a URL list and saves screenshots. This can work, and it is the option that most often gets abandoned. The script needs someone to run it, someone to maintain it when the site’s ISI tray or consent banner changes, and it produces files without a record of who ran what. Budget for the maintenance, not the first version.
5. RouteShot
RouteShot is built for the repeating job: point it at the staging URL, and it discovers the sitemap, captures every page at your organization’s standard desktop and mobile widths, full-page and above-the-fold, handles the sticky ISI and captures its expanded state, and returns an organized ZIP with an audit trail of who ran it, when, against which URLs, with a per-page outcome. Nothing is added to the site. Staging credentials are saved once per project, encrypted and write-only. A compiled review PDF is the next release. It is not free, and seats are unlimited while billing meters on pages captured. It is the option to consider when the problem is the whole site, every milestone.
Side by side
| Capability | Web2PDF | Browser extension | Annotation tool | In-house script | RouteShot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scope per run | Whole site, capped per crawl | One page | One page | URL list | Whole site, sitemap auto-discovered |
| Changes to the site | Hints markup for dynamic content and ISI | None | None | None | None |
| Standardized viewports | Desktop, tablet, smartphone picklist | Window size | Window size | If you code it | Desktop and mobile, set once per org |
| Full-page and above-the-fold | One PDF page per web page | Manual | Manual | If you code it | Both, every page |
| ISI-aware capture | With Hints on the page | No | No | If you code it | Sticky ISI handled, expanded state captured |
| Encrypted staging auth | Credential fields in Vault | Manual | Manual | In the script | Saved once per project, write-only |
| Audit trail | Crawl summary; Vault history | None | None | None | Actor, time, URL set, per-page outcome |
| Price | Free | Free or low | Low monthly | Developer time | From $149/mo founding |
How to choose
Three questions settle it for most teams.
How many pages per cycle? A handful, inside the Web2PDF crawl limit on a site with Hints markup, and Web2PDF or an extension is fine. Twenty or more, at two widths, and you are assembling a review set by hand every milestone. That is the case for whole-site capture.
Who else captures? If more than one person produces review sets, standardized widths are the difference between comparable reviews and an argument about whose screenshot is right.
Will anyone ask what was captured? In regulated review, someone eventually does. If the answer has to be reconstructed from folder names, the audit trail is the feature you are missing, whichever tool you pick.
If the answers are “many”, “several” and “yes”, request access and we will run a capture on one of your live projects so you can judge the output against what you produce today.
Written by the RouteShot Editorial Team from primary sources, cited inline. How we write and review guides · Report an error