Swapcard vs Hopin
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
AI event networking platform for professional conferences; attendee matchmaking and exhibitor lead management for trade shows and associations competing with Brella and Cvent event apps.
About
Swapcard is an AI-powered event networking and community platform designed for professional conferences, trade shows, and associations — providing attendee matchmaking, meeting scheduling, exhibitor lead management, and event community features that help organizers deliver measurable networking value for attendees. Founded in 2013 in Paris, France by Benjamin Boutet and Apolline Adiju, Swapcard has raised approximately $25 million and serves event organizers globally, including major associations, media companies, and corporate event teams who run large multi-day professional events.\n\nSwapcard's platform enables conference attendees to connect with each other through AI-powered profile matching — the system analyzes attendee professional profiles, stated interests, and session registrations to recommend high-relevance connections and facilitate meeting requests before, during, and after events. For exhibitors and sponsors, the platform provides lead scanning, meeting booking, and post-event lead nurturing tools. The community layer maintains attendee engagement between annual events through year-round networking.\n\nIn 2025, Swapcard competes in the event technology and virtual/hybrid events market against Hopin (now RingCentral Events), Brella (event networking focus), Grip, and Cvent for event networking and app platform share. The event technology market contracted after the COVID-driven virtual events boom before stabilizing around hybrid and enhanced in-person event experiences. Swapcard's focus on AI-powered meaningful matchmaking differentiates it from basic event apps that list schedules and exhibitor directories. The 2025 strategy focuses on deepening its AI matching capabilities to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in networking recommendations, expanding its integration with event registration systems, and growing its year-round community product for associations.
Acquired by RingCentral $15M Aug 2023 (from $7.8B valuation); sold to Bending Spoons Apr 2024; $1B+ funding raised at peak; rebranded to RingCentral Events; pandemic-era unicorn decline; virtual events platform
About
Hopin was founded in 2019 by Johnny Boufarhat as a virtual event platform designed to replicate the spontaneous networking and multi-session structure of in-person conferences in an online format. The platform launched just before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the global events industry to shift entirely to digital, creating an extraordinary product-market fit moment that drove Hopin from near-zero to a $7.8 billion valuation in under two years — one of the fastest valuation escalations in European startup history. Hopin's core technology offered a multi-stage event architecture with simultaneous sessions, expo halls, and AI-powered attendee matching that no incumbent platform could replicate at launch.\n\nHopin's platform supported virtual and hybrid events ranging from small team off-sites to conferences with tens of thousands of attendees, with features including breakout networking rooms, sponsor booths, live streaming, and analytics dashboards for organizers. The company aggressively expanded through acquisitions, purchasing StreamYard, Streamable, and several other media and production tools to build a broader creator and events infrastructure stack. At its peak, Hopin served thousands of event organizers across enterprise, media, and nonprofit sectors.\n\nHopin's trajectory became one of the defining cautionary narratives of pandemic-era startup valuations. As in-person events returned, demand for virtual-first platforms collapsed. RingCentral acquired Hopin's event platform assets for $15 million in August 2023 — a 99.8% markdown from peak valuation — and rebranded it RingCentral Events. In April 2024, Bending Spoons acquired additional Hopin assets. The company raised over $1 billion in venture funding during its growth phase, making it one of the most studied examples of COVID-era valuation inflation and its aftermath.
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