The Best Place to Buy Diamond Engagement Rings Online – Top 5

You want to make one of the most special occasions in life even more special with a diamond engagement ring but you are not very sure of selecting a store? Or you may be wondering whether you are making the right purchase decision? Even worst, you have too many options and want to select the best from your list?. In this article, I will help you to decide what is best place to buy diamond engagement rings online

Some topics I am going to cover are,

• Best place to buy diamond engagement rings online – Top 5 recommended stores
• How to know whether you are paying a fair price?
• Sellers you should avoid

Best Places to Buy Diamond Engagement Rings Online

Buying jewelry online is becoming popular every day. If you are not still convinced whether to buy your diamond engagement ring online or from a physical store, I have shared some benefits of buying jewelry online in this article.

So without further due, let’s start with the list of best places to buy diamond rings online.

1. James Allen
2. Blue Nile
3. Etsy
4. Leibish & Co.
5. Whiteflash

Buying a diamond engagement ring from James Allen

James Allen is recognized as the best online jewelry store. They have a huge variety of diamond engagement rings in terms of designs and prices.

You can buy a diamond ring off the shelf and the prices are generally USD 700 upwards. You can also choose a loose diamond/diamonds from their huge collection and get a customized engagement ring done.

When getting a customized design done, the process of selecting what exactly you want is very comprehensive yet very simple. You can select diamonds starting from USD 300 and going even beyond USD 100,000. Many metal types and ring designs can also be selected and the price starts from around USD 250 and goes up till about USD 5000.

Even if you haven’t decided from whom to buy, pay a visit to JameAllen store and just test this process of designing your own ring. You will for sure get some ideas, at least.

The 360⁰ view they offer is very useful. You can view the ring completely, which is very useful when buying your diamond engagement ring online. If I am not mistaken, JamesAllen is the first store to offer this 360⁰ view.

JamesAllen also has a great customer care service and offers a lifetime warranty for their jewelry covering the regular maintenance. On top of that, you will get a 30 days money back, no questions asked guarantee plus free shipping.

Buying a Diamond Ring from BlueNile

BlueNile is as good as JamesAllen to buy your diamond engagement ring. Blue Nile also offers the option of designing your own diamond ring by selecting the diamond, ring design and metal type. They also have off the shelf diamond engagement rings as well. They also offer the 360⁰ view of their jewelry.

One advantage of BlueNile over JamesAllen is that they offer colored diamonds. Some of you might prefer to use a different color diamond over the traditional diamonds. By the time I am writing this article, BlueNile had yellow, light pink and slight bluish tinted diamonds in their colored diamond section. Pay a visit and see whether that is something of interest to you. They also have their own diamond brand called Astor.

The prices of diamonds range from around USD 250 upwards (The most expensive diamond available at the time I am writing this article is USD 1.9 million). Off the shelf diamond engagement rings price between USD 800 and USD 40,000.

BlueNile does not offer free maintenance for their jewelry unless it is a manufacturing defect. But they do offer the convenience of the 30-day money back guarantee and free shipping.

BlueNile also offers a discount for direct wire transfers over credit card payments which is another plus point over JamesAllen. I could not find a similar offer with JamesAllen. BlueNile also offers diamond engagement rings of some designer brands such as Monique Lhuillier, ZAC Zac Posen and Bella Vaughan.

Buying a Diamond Engagement Ring on Etsy

To mix things up a bit, I am going to move away from big recognized online stores to Etsy. Etsy is a market place of small creative shops from all around the world for many different products including jewelry. I am a big fan of Etsy because it is a platform for small entrepreneurs to showcase their products to the whole world.

When you are wondering the best place to buy diamond rings online, you will not regret visiting Etsy and checking what they have to offer you. Especially, if you are fan of handmade unique items and boutique shops, you will fall in love with this market place. Etsy is also a great place if you are concerned about the price of the ring.

If you want to make sure the diamond engagement ring you are going to buy online is one of a kind and unique, Etsy might be your best bet. However, since there are so many sellers, you have to make sure that you are buying from a trustworthy seller.

You can get an idea about the validity of the seller from the number and the quality of reviews the shop has got. Etsy is also an extremely trustworthy market place and they will assist you if you ever run into a problem with a particular seller (which is highly unlikely if you select the seller properly. More information on selecting a seller on Etsy is given here)

Etsy will definitely offer you the widest variety of choices in terms of designs and as well as prices. It has small time entrepreneurs from all around the world and you might be able to get some great deals as the cost of operating in some countries are far less than in US or Europe. If you are going to make the purchase from Etsy for a diamond ring, it is always better to ask for a valid certificate proving that the diamond is authentic (There are synthetic diamonds as well as some other stone which look like diamond)

However, you will not have the luxury of using complicated tools to get your own design done, 360⁰ view and free maintenance which the big players do offer. If you want to get a custom design done, you have to message the seller and agree on the design and price. In order to get a full view of the ring, you can ask the seller to send a video of the product. But most sellers will offer free shipping.

Buying a Diamond Engagement Ring from Leibish & Co.

To put it shortly, if you have a decent budget and you want to offer a diamond ring which really stands out, Leibish will be a great option for you. They also offers a great colored diamond collection, probably the best in the industry for that.

Off the shelf diamond engagement rings are prized USD 2000 upwards. Leibish also offers designing your own ring and the ring settings are price USD 1400 upwards and diamonds are mostly USD 1,500 upwards.

There is a loyalty program where you get points for each purchase and a dollar equivalent amount of the points collected are redeemable in the next purchase. When you are trying to purchase a product, the site will mention the points attached with that product.

Rings and some diamonds contains a video but I personally don’t like the light settings in the videos of some diamonds. The diamonds appear too whitish in some angles.

Leibish also offer a 30 day money back guarantee, 60 day free resizing service and a lifetime warranty for maintenance.

Buying a Diamond Engagement Ring from Whiteflash

Whiteflash will be a great choice if you are looking for a designer brand diamond engagement ring. They offers a wide range of diamond rings from many popular brands. SimonG, RITANI, TACORI, A.JAFFE and Valoria are some of the brands offered by Whiteflash.

A unique advantage of Whiteflash is that they offer a wide range of diamonds. The tool they have for selecting the diamonds is pretty cool. You can easily change different parameters such as price, weight, clarity, etc., and narrow down your options.

They do not offer a wide range of ring designs compared to previously discussed store but Whiteflash deserves a visit due to their diamond collection. You can also send them a custom design and get a quote.

Apart from their in-house diamond collection, they also offer a much bigger virtual collection. This comprises of diamonds from the partner companies of Whiteflash.

They offer a 30 day money back guarantee for all purchases except from this virtual category. For the virtual category, the money back guarantee period is 10 days. The free maintenance period of Whiteflash is 1 year. You have to pay an additional amount at the purchasing time to extend that period, if required. They offer a discount for purchasing via direct wire transfer

How to know whether you are paying a fair price?

This is somewhat of a tricky question. Diamonds comes in a super wide range of prices. The difference of diamond prices depends on the 4 c’s which explained here. In summary, the 4 c’s stands for color, clarity, cut and carat weight.

So, diamonds with much lower prices might be low in either one or more of above factors and the prices increase as the combination of these 4 c’s improve. Bigger diamonds are not necessarily be better and smaller diamonds doesn’t have to be cheap. The price depends on all these 4 factors.

However, different sellers might sell similar quality diamonds at different price points due the differences in their pricing strategies.

I strongly suggest you to go through this 4 c’s of diamonds before making your purchase. Not only that it will help you to make a better decision, it will give you a lot of confidence after the purchase. Last thing you probably want is to spend time worrying about a purchase after it is done.

This video by GIA on how to select a diamond will also give you a quick overview of the the 4 c’s.

Sellers to Avoid

All the above are totally legitimate stores. You have to pay extra attention only if you are buying from Etsy, when selecting the exact seller. But Etsy in general is a highly trusted and appreciated online market place.

If you want to buy from someone else, that is absolutely fine. But, it is always better to vet the seller through online reviews, facebook comments, and other similar means. You should contact the seller directly as well and ask them for more details on the product you want to purchase. You will be able to get a good idea on the professionalism of that company based on how they respond. If you have to wait for days to get a response or if they are not willing to answer your questions, don’t waste your time.

It is especially important to ask for a valid certificate for the diamonds. This is important as there are plenty of synthetic diamonds in the market as well as stones such as white zircon which are sold as diamonds.

Due to the horror stories of how diamonds are actually mined, a program called The Kimberly Program was introduced in 2003. Diamonds sellers can participate in the program to confirm that the diamonds they sell are ethically sourced and no money is being channeled to wars and terrorism in Africa.

All the big stores listed above are a part of the Kimberly Program and for Etsy, you have to check with the individual seller about the source of their diamonds.

Final Thoughts

The objective of this long post was to give you a few recommendations and tips on the best place to buy diamond engagement rings online.

I gave several options covering a range of different advantages and disadvantages including some important other tips to make a better purchasing decision.

Buying a diamond engagement ring online can feel as a hectic task due to the significance of the product. But I hope, I managed to give you good list of stores and tips to make you feel much more comfortable with your purchase.

I would love to hear your thoughts and please also let me know any questions you might have.