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Similar to UPS SurePost, FedEx SmartPost is FedEx’s ground delivery service that delivers to United States residential addresses. Since USPS is the only carrier legally permitted to deliver to each residential address in the United States, USPS completes the last-mile delivery for all SmartPost parcels.
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Why Use FedEx SmartPost?
SmartPost has grown popular it allows FedEx shippers to reach US residential addresses at affordable rates. Users can save between $0.50-$1.00 per parcel when they use SmartPost…but it comes at a price. The ground delivery times are quite slow, sometimes taking between 10-12 days. This inevitably creates a lot of support issues, with customers writing in tickets asking where their packages are. Eventually, the influx of customer support will detract from the core operations of the business.
When you’re running an eCommerce business, it’s crucial to have your parcels delivered as fast as possible. USPS provides the best mix of fast delivery and affordable rates, to begin with. Therefore, we suggest you avoid SmartPost and simply use USPS to ship your parcels end to end from the start. You can even use shipping software to buy postage at deeply discounted rates such as USPS Commercial Pricing. This will save you a lot of money on postage as well, and your parcels will even arrive at their destinations within the Postal Service’s quick delivery timeframes.
USPS and UPS Ground are Better Options
As we said before, shipping with USPS directly is almost always the better choice as opposed to FedEx SmartPost. FedEx specializes in shipping business documents and emergency deliveries, so unless you’re sending those, there’s no reason to go outside of USPS. Not to mention, USPS ground service got much cheaper in 2022, as the Postal Service wanted to incentivize shippers to ship more ground packages instead of using air-based services such as First Class Package and Priority Mail. Still, delivery often takes close to two weeks with USPS ground, so even though it’s cheap, it isn’t ideal.
If you’re looking for much faster ground service than what USPS offers, then consider UPS Ground. UPS Ground may be the most affordable UPS offering, but you’d never know it based on its delivery timeframes. It’s priced similarly to ground service from USPS, but delivery happens between 1-5 business days and is even faster if you’re shipping to a nearby location. We’ve shipped some packages with UPS Ground that even arrive the next day!
Learn more about the difference between UPS Ground and USPS Parcel Select Ground.
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