Almost every call that starts with "I need this stump gone" is really a choice between two different jobs, and the words for them get used interchangeably in a way that causes a lot of confusion. It is worth twenty seconds to get the distinction straight, because the two produce very different results in your yard.
Stump grinding chips the stump away. The visible stump and the flare of root around it are reduced to wood chips, below the level of the surrounding soil, and what is left is a shallow depression full of those chips. The roots further out stay where they are, in the ground, and quietly break down over the following years. From the surface, the stump is gone.
Stump removal, in the strict sense, means pulling the root ball out of the ground. That leaves a genuine hole — often a large and surprisingly deep one — plus a root ball that has to go somewhere, and a stretch of yard that has been driven over and dug up. It is a much bigger disturbance to the site.
For the overwhelming majority of residential yards, grinding is the right answer. If the goal is to mow across the spot, stop stubbing a toe on it, put grass or a bed back over it, or simply stop looking at it, grinding gets you there with far less damage to everything around it. The chips settle, the ground firms up, and within a season the spot blends back in.
Where the strict removal question genuinely comes up is when something structural is going into that exact ground — a footing, a post set to depth, a pool, a run of pipe. In those cases what matters is not the stump but the root mass underneath it, and that is a conversation to have with whoever is doing the construction before anyone grinds anything.
There is one more reason grinding tends to win: access. A grinder has to be able to reach the stump, but it needs a lot less room and does a lot less damage getting there than the equipment involved in pulling a root ball. On a tight side yard, a sloped back garden, or a lot with a fence and a gate between the driveway and the stump, that difference is often the whole decision.
Not sure which one your situation calls for? Call Alexander's Stump Grinding & Tree Service at (470) 939-8929, or send a photo through the form on this site. Tell us where the stump sits and what you are hoping to do with the spot afterwards, and you will get a straight answer and a free estimate.