How Hopin Saved Two Months of Engineering Time with WorkOS

In January 2019, Hopin, a virtual events start-up in London, had seven employees and was valued at $38 million. But as the pandemic spread and more and more people held virtual events, Hopin’s business took off.  

In June 2020, Hopin raised a fresh $40 million from venture capital firms such as Accel and IVP. Last month, without even building a formal presentation, the company garnered a further $125 million, valuing it at $2.1 billion — a 77-fold increase from a year ago.

As Hopin grew up-market, they began serving notable clients—Adobe, Webflow, Disrupt—that required  Single Sign-On (SSO) for their corporate events. Hopin estimated it would take two months to build SSO in-house, so they began exploring external options.

A swift two week SSO set-up

Facing sharp rises in both demand and funding, Hopin needed a SSO solution to meet new clients’ security expectations. The company implemented SSO in record time with WorkOS.

Getting WorkOS's SSO product up and running was simple, easy, and quick. Their documentation is detailed and accurate; their SDKs made the integration joyful.

— João Fernandes, Engineering Manager

‍

From the start of the partnership, Hopin’s team:

• Saw a walk-through of the authentication process in hours.
• Had a proof-of-concept in a week.
• Tested their SSO integration with customers within two weeks.

WorkOS helped Hopin move quickly by providing reliable, convenient support. Throughout the integration process, we connected with Hopin’s team over a shared Slack onboarding channel. Our practice of using Slack for developer support allowed Hopin to quickly get questions answered and relay product feedback.

“Whenever we ran into issues, the WorkOS team was there to help,” said João.

A  flexible, protocol-friendly integration process

The Hopin team was already familiar with the OAuth2 protocol for building SSO. They were not as familiar with SAML, joking that everyone hates XML.

Luckily, WorkOS is OAuth-2-friendly. Our SSO API provides a similar level of abstraction and integration “feel” as OAuth2 for major enterprise IdPs like Okta, generic SAML, PingFederate, OneLogin and others.

“OAuth is a familiar standard, and that helps to build confidence in the overall solution,” said João. “It took us hours to see the first walks through the authentication's happy-path work.”

The Hopin team integrated with Okta SSO and started selling SSO to a wider range of their customers. But soon after, their customers started to ask for different IdP support, like OneLogin and AzureAD.

One of the best parts of working with WorkOS? It took zero development effort for Hopin to support additional IdPs. They used WorkOS’ help documentation to show their clients how to set up SSO.

When they first integrated with WorkOS, Hopin used our documentation to write guides for their customers on setting up SSO.

Eventually, Hopin integrated with the WorkOS Admin Portal so they no longer had to write these guides from scratch. With this integration, the company was able help customers asking for IdPs other than Okta even more quickly.

WorkOS helped Hopin save time and boost enterprise revenue

By using WorkOS, Hopin was able to save two months of valuable engineering team time and focus on their core product.

Hopin has also been able to rapidly onboard customers that require SSO for their events—opening a floodgate of enterprise revenue. Their partnership with WorkOS is helping to fuel Hopin’s upmarket growth for hosting virtual events.

We enhanced our product with an enterprise-grade SSO offer that has allowed us to close multiple deals. It empowered us to keep the focus on what we do best: host your virtual events. It was undoubtedly the right decision.

— João Fernandes, Engineering Manager

‍

Results

• A fast, seamless onboarding process. WorkOS provided Hopin with a walk-through of the authentication process in hours and helped them create a proof-of-concept in a week.
• Rapid implementation of SSO technology. Hopin tested their SSO integration with clients after two weeks of using WorkOS.
• Thousands of saved hours. With WorkOS, Hopin saved two months’ worth of engineering time.

Looking for an SSO solution that is familiar, fast, and secure? Try out WorkOS today.