Hopin vs Raklet: What Happened to Hopin?

Last Updated: July 2026

If you are comparing Hopin and Raklet in 2026, the first honest thing to know is that Hopin no longer exists as an independent event platform. In August 2023, Hopin sold its Events and Sessions product lines to RingCentral, where they now run as RingCentral Events. The company that remained rebranded to StreamYard Top Corp and was acquired by Bending Spoons in April 2024. So a buyer searching for Hopin is really choosing between two different successor products, depending on the job. This page explains what happened, then compares the honest options: RingCentral Events for large virtual and hybrid event production, and Raklet for organizations that need year-round membership, community, and a real CRM around their events. If you are still mapping the field, see the full list of alternatives to Hopin for more options.

Hopin vs Raklet: At a Glance

Verdict: If your job is to produce one large virtual or hybrid conference, the direct successor to Hopin is RingCentral Events, and it is purpose-built for that. If your job is to run an ongoing membership, association, alumni network, or community that also holds events, the Hopin lineage was never built for that, and Raklet is. Raklet adds a real member CRM, recurring memberships, digital cards, a private community, and a branded mobile app that the Hopin events product does not offer.

Hopin vs Raklet: A Side-by-Side Overview

Hopin was founded in January 2019 in London by Johnny Boufarhat, who built it from home while managing an autoimmune condition. It became the defining platform of the pandemic virtual-events boom, raising more than $1 billion and reaching a peak valuation of $7.75 billion in August 2021, one of the fastest climbs to unicorn status in European tech. As in-person events returned, demand fell sharply. In August 2023 Hopin sold its Events and Sessions products to RingCentral, which now offers them as RingCentral Events. The remaining company rebranded to StreamYard Top Corp, keeping StreamYard, Streamable, and Superwave, and was acquired by Bending Spoons in April 2024. The Hopin brand a buyer remembers is effectively retired, and its events technology lives on inside RingCentral.

Raklet is an all-in-one membership and community platform founded in 2013 in San Francisco, accepted into Techstars in 2016, and backed by Microsoft Ventures. It remains privately held and founder-led. Raklet is built around the member first: a living CRM with a contact timeline, tiered memberships and renewals, events and ticketing, email and marketing automation, digital membership cards, a private community portal, an open REST API, and a custom-branded mobile app. Pricing is fully public, with a free plan for up to 100 contacts and no annual contract requirement on entry plans.

Feature Comparison: Hopin vs Raklet

AI Features: Does Hopin Use AI?

There is no standalone Hopin AI product to evaluate, because the Hopin brand has been retired. Any AI capability now belongs to the successor products, RingCentral Events on the events side and StreamYard on the streaming side, and those roadmaps are set by their new owners. If AI-assisted event production matters to you, confirm the current feature list directly with RingCentral rather than assuming anything carried over from Hopin.

Raklet ships AI where it removes setup work rather than as a headline feature. AI onboarding agents match a new organization’s existing website design and import its pages automatically, which takes most of the manual work out of the first week. AI engagement scoring, which surfaces contacts at risk of lapsing, is still in development. Raklet’s open REST API and webhook support let organizations connect their own AI and automation tools in the meantime. Neither side is an AI-forward membership platform right now, so this is not a meaningful axis for choosing between them. Judge them on event-production depth versus membership and community depth instead.

Pricing: Hopin vs Raklet

There is no current Hopin price to quote, because the product was sold and the brand retired. Pricing for the events job now lives with RingCentral Events, which charges per organizer rather than using the free-plus-paid-events model Hopin once ran. It starts at $99 per organizer per month for the entry Events Pro plan, with up to 16% off for paying annually, and two higher tiers above it for deeper integrations, lead retrieval, and API access. A 30-day free trial with limited registrations is available. Every paid plan includes unlimited events, unlimited registrations, and unlimited attendees, which suits organizations that run large, high-attendance conferences. Confirm current figures on the RingCentral Events pricing page, and treat any older “Hopin pricing” you find online as historical.

Raklet’s pricing is fully public on the Raklet pricing page and is structured by contacts and features rather than per organizer, with each tier raising the contact ceiling and unlocking more of the platform. A free plan covers up to 100 contacts with no credit card required. Essentials is $49 per month for 500 contacts, Professional is $99 per month for 1,000 contacts, and Premium is $399 per month for 10,000 contacts. Payment transaction fees fall as you move up: 4% on Essentials, 2% on Professional, and 1% on Premium. Annual billing includes two months free. Nonprofits and educational institutions can apply for special pricing, and a custom-branded mobile app is available as a $299 per month add-on.

Cost and Fit for an Organization That Runs Events Year-Round

The models measure different things, so compare by need rather than sticker price. RingCentral Events prices per organizer for unlimited events, which is clean when your job is to produce a big conference, but the cost buys no membership management, no CRM, and no community between events. Raklet prices on contacts and features for a platform that manages members year-round and runs events as one part of that. For an association or alumni network that holds several events a year on top of ongoing membership, a Raklet plan covers the events and the CRM, memberships, digital cards, and app you would otherwise buy separately. Frame the decision as fit and scale, not as which tool has the lower headline number.

Hopin: Company History and Long-term Stability

Hopin’s arc is a genuine vendor-stability lesson. Founded in January 2019 in London, it raised more than $1 billion and reached a valuation of nearly $7.75 billion at its August 2021 peak, riding pandemic demand for virtual events. When in-person events returned, that demand collapsed, and in August 2023 Hopin sold its Events and Sessions products to RingCentral for an undisclosed sum. The scale of the reversal is easier to see from the other side of the table: as TechCrunch noted at the time, RingCentral’s own market cap was under $4 billion, well below what Hopin had been worth privately two years earlier. For the funding and acquisition history, see the Hopin company profile and RingCentral’s acquisition announcement.

The practical takeaway for a buyer is not that the technology stopped working, because it did not, but that the brand and company you would have signed with were dismantled inside two years. The events product now sits inside RingCentral, a large public company, which is a different vendor relationship than dealing with an independent event startup. If long-term continuity matters to your organization, weigh that history when you evaluate any offer tied to the Hopin lineage.

Raklet, by contrast, was founded in 2013, accepted into Techstars in 2016, and backed by Microsoft Ventures. It remains privately held and founder-led, with a small, engineering-led team that ships features and onboards customers directly. There is no distressed sale or multi-owner handoff baked into the vendor relationship.

What Hopin Users Say

Hopin earned genuine praise at its peak as one of the best experiences available for running large virtual and hybrid conferences, and that goodwill largely carried into the successor product. The review trail is worth reading carefully, because it makes the handover visible: Capterra still lists the product under its original Hopin Events entry, now titled RingCentral Events, where it holds about 4.5 out of 5 across roughly 325 reviews. On G2 it holds a similar 4.5 out of 5 across roughly 935 reviews. Those are live ratings for the successor, not for a standalone “Hopin” product, and any star rating you find labeled simply “Hopin” should be checked against which company actually owns it today.

The complaint that matters most for membership organizations is about who owns the data. Through the Hopin Events era, nonprofits and associations repeatedly flagged that attendee data sat with the platform rather than with the organizer, which is a hard problem when the whole point of running the event was to grow a member list you control. Raklet inverts that: contact data is the organization’s asset, held in a CRM that persists after the event ends.

The operational complaints in the current successor’s reviews cluster around three things. Onboarding and contract rigidity comes up often, with reviewers describing account activation taking weeks after a contract was signed, and little flexibility on start dates to compensate. Reliability during live broadcasts is the second, with recurring reports of audio and video glitches and bugs that needed a page refresh, which is a visible failure when it happens during a keynote. The third is registration friction: requiring attendees to create an account and clear two-step verification is a real drag on sign-up rates for public-facing events.

Cost and scale mismatch is the last recurring theme, and it maps directly onto this comparison. At $99 per organizer per month the platform is built for organizations producing large, high-attendance conferences. Reviewers running user groups, nonprofits, and smaller recurring gatherings describe it as more platform and more cost than the job needs, with no year-round home for member data once an event ends. That gap between one-time event production and ongoing membership is exactly what Raklet is built to fill.

Switching from Hopin to Raklet: What to Expect

Switching to Raklet makes sense when your priority is not producing a single large event but managing and engaging members all year. The migration is straightforward on the people side. You export your attendee and registration lists, and Raklet’s team helps map those into Raklet’s CRM, turn one-time attendees into recurring members with tiers and renewals, issue digital membership cards, and set up the member portal and future events from one platform. A free Raklet account lets your team validate the fit before committing to a paid plan, and there is no annual contract requirement on standard plans.

One honest note makes the decision easier. Former Hopin Events customers were already required to migrate once, to RingCentral, when the product changed hands, so the usual “we do not want to switch” objection is weaker here than normal. The real work is data portability and rethinking events as part of an ongoing membership program rather than as isolated productions. If your core need is still to stream one very large conference, RingCentral Events remains the purpose-built successor, and pairing it with Raklet for year-round membership is a reasonable split.

Hopin or Raklet: Which Is Right for You?

RingCentral Events (the Hopin successor) may be the better fit if…

The successor to Hopin suits teams whose primary job is large virtual or hybrid event production. If you run high-attendance conferences with multi-track sessions, expo booths, sponsor activations, and heavy live streaming, RingCentral Events is built for exactly that and carries forward Hopin’s core event technology. Organizations that live inside the event-production workflow, and that budget per event, will find it purpose-built. If a polished, large-scale virtual event is the outcome you are buying, the Hopin lineage still delivers it inside RingCentral.

Raklet is the better fit if…

Raklet fits organizations whose primary need is people, not a single production. If you manage members, run several events a year, sell tiered memberships, want a private community and a custom-branded mobile app, and need marketing automation and a living CRM, Raklet delivers a stack the Hopin events product never offered. Organizations that want a free plan to start, fully public pricing with no sales call, and an open REST API for custom integrations will find those built in. For more event-platform comparisons, see Accelevents vs Raklet and Eventbrite vs Raklet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What happened to Hopin?

A: In August 2023, Hopin sold its Events and Sessions products to RingCentral, where they now run as RingCentral Events. The remaining company rebranded to StreamYard Top Corp, keeping StreamYard, Streamable, and Superwave, and was acquired by Bending Spoons in April 2024. The Hopin brand itself has effectively been retired.

Q: Does Hopin still exist?

A: Not as a standalone events product. The event platform that used to be Hopin is now RingCentral Events. If you are looking for the direct successor for virtual and hybrid event production, that is where the technology lives today.

Q: Is Raklet a good Hopin alternative?

A: For organizations that need year-round membership, a CRM, and community around their events, yes. Raklet offers tiered memberships, digital cards, a private community, and a branded mobile app that the Hopin events product never had. For pure large-scale virtual event production, the direct successor is RingCentral Events, and some organizations pair the two.

Q: Can Hopin manage memberships and a member database?

A: No. The Hopin lineage was built for event production and holds attendee and registration data, not a member CRM or a recurring-membership engine. If you need to manage members, renewals, and relationships between events, that is Raklet’s core job, not Hopin’s.

Q: Hopin vs Raklet, which is better for a nonprofit or association running events?

A: For a nonprofit or association that runs events as part of ongoing membership, Raklet is the better fit because it combines a member CRM, memberships, community, and events in one platform at a lower entry price. For a one-off, very large virtual conference, RingCentral Events, the Hopin successor, is purpose-built.

The Bottom Line

The honest comparison starts by naming what happened: Hopin was dismantled, its events engine now lives inside RingCentral Events, and the company became StreamYard under Bending Spoons. That makes the real choice a choice about the job. If you need to produce a large virtual or hybrid conference, RingCentral Events is the purpose-built successor. If you need to run an ongoing membership, association, or community that also holds events, the Hopin lineage was never built for that, and Raklet is: a member CRM, tiered memberships, digital cards, a private community, and a custom-branded app, at a lower entry price and with a free plan to start.

If you want to see what Raklet looks like for your membership before speaking to anyone, start with the free trial. If you have questions about moving your attendee and registration lists over, the team can walk you through the mapping.

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