Affiliate Disclosures
An increasing number of people today are looking to shop for their jewelry online. Online shopping is convenient – large inventories to choose from, delivery right to your doorstep, and easy access to a range of vendors from the comfort of your home.
Top Places to Buy Gemstone Jewelry Online
Delarah is an online retailer that focuses on gemstone jewelry, offering a wide range of choice in this department. Their inventory spans popular gemstones like sapphires, rubies, and emeralds, as well as lesser-known stones such as yellow beryl, amazonite, and chrome diopside.
While the company is based in Los Angeles, they only offer their products online. As a result, they’re able to cut down on overheads and offer their products at competitive prices for a variety of budgets, ranging from $50 to over $50,000. The jewelry is of high-quality and is crafted expertly.
Delarah’s site is easy to navigate, and we particularly liked that their products are categorized according to gemstones, making it easier to find what you’re looking for. They also offer competitive after sales policies, with free shipping, price match guarantee, and hassle-free 25-day returns.
While they would benefit from offering more options to contact the customer service, they are quick to resolve issues, stand by their products and offer excellent customer service. Currently, Delarah only offers their products within the US, which is another downside if you’re located elsewhere.
As an online platform that houses over 2.5 million sellers rather than just being a single seller itself, Etsy does offer a great diversity of quality. Simply put, many of the sellers that work through Etsy are of excellent quality, while others – not so much.
This means that you’ll have to do a bit more research into every vendor you’re considering buying from. That being said, Etsy’s benefits far outweigh its drawbacks.
For one, Etsy offers a truly enormous assortment of gemstone jewelry pieces, much greater than anything else you’ll find online. On Etsy, you can see everything from $2 citrine geodes to $60,000 emerald necklaces.
Because it’s a whole digital marketplace in and of itself, Etsy tends to have a lot of very competitive prices. Most vendors’ presentations have also been getting better and better in the last few years and it’s not uncommon to find vendors who even offer certificates from reputable gemological institutes for their gemstones.
Again, you will have to research the trustworthiness and shipping/return policies of each vendor. However, with a bit of time, you’re sure to discover a lot of fascinating gemstone jewelry.
James Allen is one of the most recognizable names in the jewelry world and for a lot of good reasons. Starting their online vendor page in 2006, James Allen revolutionized the online retailer niche with their excellent jewelry presentations, high jewelry quality, and excellent customer service.
In a lot of ways, James Allen is one of the big reasons why online jewelry shopping is as trusted and popular as it is today. One of the biggest innovations this vendor introduced to the business is their ridiculously high image quality. This vendor brilliantly recognized that people will never fully trust online jewelry stores unless they can see what they are buying as well – and better – than they would’ve been able in a physical store. James Allen achieved exactly that with the detailed HD 3D imagery they offer for every diamond, gemstone, or jewelry piece on their website.
And that is quite an achievement, considering that James Allen also offers the largest inventory of diamonds in the world. Despite their focus on diamonds, they have quite an impressive collection of other gemstones and gemstone jewelry too. All that is available at more than fair prices too which is especially nice to see given the overall quality of the service.
Established all the way back in 1999, Blue Nile is one of the first online jewelry vendors to establish themselves as a powerhouse in this niche. Blue Nile’s creator, Mark Vadon, accomplished this by realizing the true potential of online retailers – instead of purchasing diamonds, gemstones, and jewelry from manufacturers and wholesalers to then sell them to their audience, Blue Nile would just list these items directly from the manufacturers and wholesalers without purchasing them until an order has been made.
This business model sounds simple from today’s point of view, but it was revolutionized by Blue Nile and helped rocket them to the top of everyone’s lists of online jewelry vendors. So, what benefits can Blue Nile offer you thanks to their business model?
Blue Nile has an excellent range of birthstone jewelry and fine gemstone jewelry. This retailer offers incredibly competitive prices compared to most other online vendors, often beating the competition by over 50% price difference. They also have excellent images and presentation for most of their stock and are known for their super-efficient fulfillment. Blue Nile are especially well renowned for their best-in-class customer service.
Brilliant Earth is at the center of a lot of online discussions regarding the ethics of the diamond and jewelry industries. Brilliant Earth prides itself as a vendor of ethically sourced diamonds and gemstones, as well as recycled and eco-friendly jewelry metals.
The main reason many people call this into question is that how ethically sourced Brilliant Earth’s stock depends mostly on the honesty of their suppliers, which Brilliant Earth can’t really trace or verify 100%. Even with that being the case, however, Brilliant Earth is still doing more in that regard than most other online and brick-and-mortar vendors.
In terms of the other criteria we look for in an online jewelry vendor, Brilliant Earth is a solid choice in every regard. All the Brilliant Earth stock we’ve sampled was of very high quality and they do have vast and very diverse jewelry and gemstone catalogs. The customer service was also top-notch and the prices are quite competitive, although not quite on James Allen’s or Blue Nile’s level.
Angara offers a wide assortment of both diamond and gemstone jewelry, with most of it oriented toward women. The store’s name literally translates as The Fire Within from Sanskrit, and the diamond and gemstone collections of this vendor live up to its name with the quality brilliance and fire they offer. One unique selling point that Angara offers is the ability to choose your gemstone quality – from good to heirloom quality.
The company is based in Los Angeles but also has websites in Australia, the UK, and Canada. Angara has partnerships with renowned brands such as Natori and Harvard University, but the company itself is vertically integrated. This means that the company does everything from stone cutting, through design, manufacturing, and quality control, all the way to marketing and order fulfilment.
And the end results are impressive – Angara offers high-quality diamond and gemstone jewelry, a great diversity of stone settings and designs, competitive prices thanks to the company’s vertical integration (up to 30-40% less than the competition!), risk-free shipping and lifetime warranty policies, free customer engravings, and more. The only drawback of this vendor is the fact that men’s jewelry is limited to wedding bands only.
7. Helzberg
As one of the oldest jewelry chains in the US – established in 1915 – Helzberg has a long-standing reputation. As of today, more than one hundred years after its inception, Helzberg has over two hundred physical stores in the US and a very nice online store.
As a more traditional type of vendor, Helzberg’s online store does have a smaller collection than some of the online-only vendors we’ve mentioned above. However, their collection is still more than vast enough to satisfy almost anyone’s taste. They offer men’s and women’s jewelry of all types – wedding and engagement rings, necklaces, pendants, earrings, bracelets, and more.
Additionally, because of their hundreds of physical locations across the US, Helzberg offers both same-day deliveries and in-store pickups if you want to check your purchase in person.
It should be noted that, as a brick-and-mortar vendor, Helzberg’s prices are not as competitive as those of other online-only vendors but they are still quite customer-friendly for a physical retailer chain.
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