Shippo Alternative: Auto-Picks the Cheaper Carrier

I'd Ship That is a Shippo alternative for sellers who want the carrier chosen for them: Ship Intelligence auto-picks the cheapest valid USPS or UPS rate on every order, The Workbench prints a whole batch of labels, and native iOS and Android apps sit alongside the web app. Shippo also documents a shipping API with webhooks, so weigh that separately if your own software creates the labels.

I'd Ship That chooses the carrier for you. Ship Intelligence re-checks USPS against UPS on every order and buys the cheapest valid service, The Workbench bulk-imports and prints a whole batch of labels in one pass, and it all runs from native iOS and Android apps plus web. You get USPS pricing below commercial on almost every label and see the full price with every fee before you buy. It is free to start, with an optional Pro upgrade for higher-volume sellers.

Shippo's free Starter plan is capped at a monthly label count, and the Pro plan is priced by label volume, so start from how many labels you print a month. But that question is the small money. On the orders where USPS Ground Advantage and UPS Ground diverge, especially heavier boxes past the mid-weight range, choosing the wrong one costs you the gap between the two rates. Optimize the rate first and the fee second. I'd Ship That is free to start and you pay per label; a Starter label adds a platform fee of about 10% of the postage ($0.50 to $2.50) and a Pro label nothing, and Ship Intelligence picks the cheapest valid rate for you automatically.

Yes. Shippo documents a multi-carrier shipping API over REST, with webhooks for tracking and transaction updates, for teams whose own software creates the labels. This page compares the label apps a person uses. On I'd Ship That, that means USPS and UPS labels from the web and from native iOS and Android apps, with a label ready in about 30 seconds.

Shippo supports USPS, FedEx, UPS, and a range of additional regional and international carriers. I'd Ship That supports USPS and UPS today, with deep discounts off retail on both. That covers most domestic parcel volume, because USPS wins light and close packages and UPS often wins heavy and far ones, so rate-shopping those two catches the cheaper option on the large majority of orders. If you specifically need FedEx or broader multi-carrier breadth, factor that into your decision.

It comes down to weight and zone. As a 2026 rule of thumb: under 1 pound and in close zones (1 to 4), USPS Ground Advantage almost always wins, because its flat sub-pound price is low and UPS has no sub-pound tier. Through 5 pounds, USPS Ground Advantage commercial is lower than UPS Ground's published daily rate at every zone. Between 5 and 22 pounds the lower carrier depends on weight and zone, and from 22 pounds UPS Ground is lower at every zone, because USPS weight-based rates climb steeply while UPS scales flatter per pound. For small, dense, heavy boxes, check cubic pricing, which bills by volume under 0.5 cubic feet and can beat both. The catch: those lines shift with every rate change, so a memorized rule quietly goes stale. Ship Intelligence re-checks both carriers on every order instead.

USPS raised shipping prices about 6.6% (Priority Mail) to 7.8% (Ground Advantage) on January 18, 2026, and UPS raised its rates an average of 5.9% in December 2025. On a $9 label that is roughly $0.53 to $0.70 more per shipment; across 500 monthly orders that is $250 or more a month in new cost, before any dimensional or peak surcharges. Two levers absorb it: buying USPS labels below retail ($2-$5 on light packages, $7-$35 on heavy ones versus Post Office retail, at the Pro price) and rate-shopping USPS against UPS on every order, which Ship Intelligence does automatically, so the cheaper carrier wins the package instead of a default carrier taking the full increase.