For many small businesses, shipping costs often eat into profits more than anyone wants. Finding easy shipping solutions on the bottom line and getting goods to customers on time is essential and sometimes feels like a never-ending struggle. In what appears to be a move to compete with USPS’ Ground Advantage program, UPS has announced its new ground service called UPS Ground Saver, offering many of the same features for a similar price. This guide will dive into the new service and determine how it can help your business’ shipping needs.

What is UPS Ground Saver?

Because creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum, UPS’ Ground Saver is a similarly named service from UPS that exists to mimic the service levels and guarantees that USPS Ground Advantage has. UPS Ground Saver is the new general entry-level shipping tier for UPS shipping. 

UPS Ground Saver Features

Maximum Package Sizes and Weight Limits

UPS Ground Saver has a maximum package size to use the service.

If the package is of an irregular size, surcharges may apply in these cases:

UPS Ground Saver Restrictions and Caveats

Because Ground Saver is meant to be a budget-friendly solution, there are a few restrictions on how it can be used.

UPS Ground Saver vs. USPS Ground Advantage Price Comparison

To better understand the pricing for Ground Saver and whether it’s a good value compared to its USPS equivalent, we’ve estimated a few packages from both services. For this comparison, we used three packages to establish what we’d think are likely bookends of typical package size and weight ranges for goods ordered online. We’ll also compare the prices to UPS Ground, the previously cheapest UPS solution.

Each package travels from Seattle, WA, to five locations across the United States, including a U.S. Territory and an APO address. The best rate is in bold.

Note 1: Priority Mail Cubic is $13.17 for this route.
Note 2: UPS Ground is not an option for this route.
Note 3: Priority Mail Cubic is $6.84 for this route, cheaper than UPS Ground.
Note 4: Priority Mail Cubic is $10.85 for this route.

Conclusion

Our cursory rate testing found that UPS Ground Saver is best served for local shipments. USPS Ground Advantage and sometimes USPS Priority Mail are better options for longer distances. For territories and APO/FPO, USPS Ground Advantage is the best option. 

While UPS Ground Saver is a welcome addition to the shipping service lineup–saving even just $.25 to $.50 per shipment can be a big deal, it’s not likely to get used much if most of your customers aren’t local. USPS has always been good at local shipments with low rates, and anything that falls in their cubic range will be priced even more competitively, to a level UPS won’t come too close to match. For larger packages, anywhere beyond a few hundred miles will quickly see Ground Saver fall to second place as their rate table is more affected by size and weight at a distance.

Whether it’s worth using at all remains to be seen. Ground Advantage comes with insurance, too, and the marginal price difference may make it worth the cost for items with higher value.

Ultimately, deciding if it’s a good fit is up to you. I’d probably use it myself in some cases, especially for local deliveries, and switch to Ground Advantage for longer-distance items.