e show that if a nonassociative unital ring is graded by a hypercentral group, then the ring is simple if and only if it is graded simple and the center of the ring is a field. Thereby, we extend a result by Jespers to a nonassociative setting. By applying this result to nonassociative crossed products, we obtain nonassociative analogues of results by Bell, Jordan and Voskoglou. We also apply our result to Cayley-Dickson doublings, thereby obtaining a new proof of a classical result by McCrimmon. © 2020 World Scientific Publishing Company.