You may only buy one or two cremation urns throughout your life. Let us help you with the process of purchasing an urn by giving you a list of popular online retailers that sell them. You may also benefit from reading this guide to buying urns.
Overview: Our Top Picks
Jump ahead to these sections:
- What Do You Need to Know Before You Buy an Urn Online?
- Online Retailers That Sell Urns
- Frequently Asked Questions: Buying an Urn Online
Before you make your purchase, it would be helpful to know the urn’s final resting place. If the urn is to be buried in a cemetery plot, you may want to purchase the type of urn that would not require the additional purchase of an urn vault. If the urn will be placed in a columbarium niche, you might check the size restrictions. If the urn will only be used as a temporary receptacle before scattering the cremains, you may want to think more about the item’s design instead of its durability.
What Do You Need to Know Before You Buy an Urn Online?
We are happy to give you this list of online retailers that sell quality urns for ashes. However, there’s a lot that goes into selecting an urn. For that reason, you might feel more comfortable purchasing an urn from the funeral home or cremation provider – as they would ask you the critical questions that need to be asked.
Here are some of the questions to consider when choosing an urn.
What was the healthy weight of your loved one?
Most urn retailers say to plan one cubic inch of space for each pound the person weighed. So, the remains of a 145-pound person would fit into an urn with at least 145 square inches of space. Younger, taller people may require more space, as they may have had a greater bone density before they died.
What are your plans for the ashes?
Do you plan to scatter the remains? Consider purchasing a scattering urn.
Do you plan to bury the urn in a cemetery plot?
Either purchase an urn that will fit inside the urn vault or buy an urn that needs no vault. Talk with the cemetery staff before making the purchase.
Do you plan to entomb the urn in a mausoleum or columbarium niche?
Make sure the urn is the right size for those spaces – and large enough to hold your loved one’s remains.
Do you plan to keep your loved one’s ashes in a special place inside your home?
Choose an urn with a good seal and beautiful exterior that honors your loved one’s memory.
Do you plan to divide your loved one’s remains among several family members and friends?
Purchase small keepsake urns or urn pendants.
These are a few questions to ask yourself as you purchase an urn for your loved one’s ashes. Now, here are some online retailers that sell urns.
Online Retailers That Sell Urns
1. Foreverence
Foreverence is unique in the online marketplace because the company specializes in customizable and creative urns. In fact, they pride themselves in that each of their urns is 100 percent unique.
If you can dream it, Foreverence can make it. The company uses a 3D printer to make your design into reality. Do you want your cremated remains stored in an urn that looks like an African elephant? A space shuttle? Ballet slippers? Foreverence can make this happen. They even designed a custom-made urn to hold the cremains of rock legend Prince.
Since each urn is customized, we can’t give you an exact price range for these creative pieces, but assume that they will be at least $2,000. Their website says to reach out to them for a free quote. The final project can be delivered two to three weeks after the design is approved.
2. Perfect Memorials
Perfect Memorials also offers customized urns, but unlike Foreverence, its urns are not one-of-a-kind designs.
Regardless, Perfect Memorials is a great company to turn to if you would like an urn shaped like a piano, electric guitar, slot machine, motorcycle, gardening equipment, or a duck. Please understand that they cannot be customized to the point of looking exactly like your muscle car or duck, but they are much less expensive than the exact replicas that Foreverence can create.
Perfect Memorials also sell urns shaped like religious symbols or figures and traditional-looking urns as well.
The urns can be further personalized with a photograph of the individual, birth and death dates, and a quote, poem, or verse.
Pay attention to the size of the urn you order, as a small urn may only hold a portion of your loved one’s cremains. Also, the price listed on the website doesn’t include a plaque, photograph, or other engravings.
A large urn from Perfect Memorial ranges between $200 and $400. Add another $60 for personalization costs.
3. Amazon
Yes, America’s favorite online retailer also sells urns. Some of the online stores that we mention in this article (Perfect Memorials, for example) have a store on Amazon, as well.
A wide variety of styles, sizes, and colors are available from Amazon. Amazon makes it easy to organize your search so you don’t have to scroll through dozens of pages to find the right urn for your situation.
One benefit of purchasing an urn through Amazon is that if you choose a product that is not customized, Prime Members may be able to get free one-day shipping. Most are affordable — the price ranges from around $80 to $300.
4. Etsy
As you search for an urn online, consider checking out Etsy. This online marketplace specializes in items handmade by artists, as well as vintage items.
While you can purchase traditional-looking ceramic urns on Etsy, you can also buy wooden urns engraved with your loved one’s name.
Like on Amazon, the price of urns on Etsy varies widely. An urn large enough to hold the entirety of your loved one’s cremains is typically over $100. Make sure you are aware of the urn’s size before you order one through any website, as some are made only to hold a portion of your loved one’s ashes.
5. Urns.com
As you would expect, Urns.com sells a wide variety of styles, shapes, and sizes of urns. The company offers biodegradable urns, which aren’t easily found on other websites.
The company offers wood urns, pet urns, cremation jewelry, and traditional vase-like urns in every design and color imaginable. You can purchase urns made from wood, brass, metal alloy, marble, glass, cloisonne, and ceramic urns. The urn you are buying can raise awareness for a disease or show that your loved one enjoyed motorcycles.
The urns sold on this website range from $120-$300, but they offer luxury urns as well that can cost near $1,000. Free ground shipping is included in the cost.
6. Stardust Memorials
Stardust Memorials also has a wide variety of urn-related products available on its website. You can buy urns made from many different materials, keepsake urns, cremation jewelry, and urns in every style, color, theme, and size. They also sell urn vaults, which you may be required to purchase if you choose to bury the urn of your loved one in a cemetery. You can also buy urns made specifically for water burial.
Stardust Memorials offers free shipping but personalization costs extra. Look for a coupon code on the website to save money on your purchase.
7. One World Memorials
One World Memorials is another online marketplace you should consider consulting before purchasing an urn. It offers box urns as well as those that display photographs. Many urns are engravable, and these come in a wide variety of colors and styles. It also offers hand-painted cremation urns and those made with Himalayan salt (which are biodegradable).
We like how One World Memorial organizes its website. You can search for urns by how they will be used. Once you know if you will keep, scatter, bury, or share the ashes, you can find an urn appropriate for your situation. They offer environmentally friendly urns as well.
Check out its clearance page on their website to find urns at a low price.
8. Costco
Although you probably won’t find urns sitting on the shelves at your local Costco, you can purchase an urn through the website. To purchase the item, you have to have a Costco membership.
There aren’t many urns offered through this big box retailer, but purchasing them would be simple if you already have a Costco account. You can also buy caskets through Costco’s website.
9. Walmart
Like Costco, do not expect to go to your local Walmart store and find an urn sitting on the shelf. America’s largest retailer does have a lot of urns available online. In fact, One World Memorial sells urns through Walmart. Prices for all urns range between $60 and $400.
Check out Walmart’s website to also see its selection of cremation jewelry.
10. Urns Northwest
Although Urns Northwest offers a wide variety of traditional urns, you may want to check out its website if you are looking for wooden urns with an intricate carving. Be prepared to pay more for these beautiful pieces, as the wooden urns cost from $200 to $700.
They also offer ceramic, stone, and glass urns in shapes and designs that you would not be able to find on many of the other websites we mentioned, but the prices are a bit higher than the other mass-produced products.
11. Memorials.com
You’ll find a wide array of products available on Memorials.com. The prices on its typical urns are low, but they offer uniquely shaped urns as well. You can also purchase urn pendants to hang around the lid of an urn on a chain. You’ll find urn vaults, TSA-approved urns, and engraved urn nameplates as well.
Check out the sale section if you are purchasing an urn on a budget. Going through the website will take time, as it offers 10,000 different styles of urns and all will be shipped to you for free.
12. Eterneva
Do not get Eterneva mixed up with other companies that offer cremation jewelry pieces. While you can purchase rings, pendants, or bracelets with hidden (or obvious) compartments to hold a small amount of your loved one’s cremains, Eterneva’s business model is entirely different. The company uses your loved one’s cremains to grow a diamond, which it will set in whatever type of jewelry you would like.
As you could imagine, growing a diamond out of cremains (or fingernail clippings or strands of hair) is an expensive and lengthy process. The price depends on the color and carat of the diamond and can range between $3,000 and $50,000. The process can take between seven and ten months.
We know that this website doesn’t sell urns, but it deserves a shout-out for offering a unique service for those who would like to make a family heirloom out of a loved one’s cremains.
Frequently Asked Questions: Buying an Urn Online
We know this is new territory for many of you. So, we would like to answer additional questions about the urn-purchasing process.
How do you know if you’re buying the right size urn?
As we mentioned earlier, most urn retailers advise customers to consider the healthy weight of the deceased when buying an urn. For example, if the person weighed 150 pounds, ensure the urn has at least 150 cubic inches of space inside.
Most urns are designed with 200 cubic inches of space.
It may help to know a bit about the cremation process when purchasing an urn. While the remains are commonly referred to as “ash,” the result of the process is not actually ash. Instead, cremated remains are tiny bone fragments. So taller, younger people with healthy bone density may yield more cremated remains than someone short and older at the time of death.
If you have questions about the size of the urn, reach out to the cremation provider. The staff should be able to guide you on your selection.
Can you return an urn that you buy online?
Most retailers will allow you to return an unused urn if it hasn’t been personalized or used.
Most personalized products you purchase online cannot be returned unless the company errors in the personalization.
Cremated remains are typically considered sterile and safe. However, other families may not be comfortable utilizing an urn that had been used to hold another person’s bodily remains.
Do you have to transfer the ashes yourself, or do you send them in?
You will not send the ashes of your loved one to the urn retailer. Instead, they will send you an empty urn, and you will need to find a way to transfer the remains into the container.
You have several different options on how to complete this process.
You could give the urn to the cremation provider or funeral home and ask the staff to transfer the remains inside. They may charge a fee for this process, and you might need to sign a waiver that the funeral home is not responsible for the urn you purchased from an outside vendor.
You could transfer the remains into the urn yourself (or ask a friend to do it for you.)
Cremated remains are safe to handle. However, you might feel uncomfortable transferring the remains on your own.
The good news is that the cremated remains are usually placed in a sturdy plastic bag, so there is no need to handle the ashes. There’s no need to open the bag. If the mouth of the urn is wide enough, you can simply remove the plastic bag from the temporary container and place it inside the new urn.
The only times you might find it necessary to open the bag is if the bag doesn’t fit inside the mouth of the urn. However, you may need to open the bag if you are cobining the remains with another person or dividing the remains for some purpose.
If you’re not comfortable buying an urn online, where else can you purchase one?
Perhaps you feel strange buying the urn of your loved one online. You may worry that the urn won’t arrive in time for your loved one’s memorial service, or you may feel strange making such an important purchase from Walmart or Costco.
Instead, purchase an urn from a local funeral home or cremation provider. Not only will you be supporting a local business, but the staff will also be able to ask the critical questions that need to be addressed when selecting an urn. And, of course, if you purchase the urn from the cremation provider, it will simplify the process. You will only have one bill to pay, and the staff will put the remains directly inside the urn you purchase.
Things to Think About When Purchasing an Urn
Besides looking at the cost of the urn, you need to pay attention to the material it is made from, and the size. Glass or marble urns can break if they fall from your mantle. Some urns you see at a reasonable price are actually small keepsake urns, not full-sized urns.
Think about when you will need the urn. If you plan to use the urn as a part of your loved one’s end-of-life service, you’ll need to find a company that offers a quick turn-around time. You might even have to forgo the personalization to get the product in time for the service.
You may consider purchasing an urn for you to use in the future. Ensure your loved ones know where you are storing the item, so they can use it when needed.