If you don't find the answers to you questions here, check our Developer Documentation and our GetSatifaction site.

• The Basics

  

• What is CloudSponge?

  CloudSponge is a software-as-a-service product that imports all the major address books. Most websites use our product so that their users don't have to type email addresses into their referral forms when they want to send an invitation, greeting card or coupon to someone they know.

• Which contact sources does CloudSponge support?

  CloudSponge supports all major desktop address books and webmail clients.

  • Mac Address Book
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Yahoo
  • Windows Live (including Hotmail and MSN)
  • Gmail
  • AOL
  • Plaxo

  We continue to add support for more contact sources. If you would like to be notified when we have added support for a particular contact source, please send us feedback.

• Do I have to be a programmer to use CloudSponge?

  No. A little programming knowledge is helpful, but we give you a simple piece of code that you can paste into the page on your website with your referral form.

  If you are a programmer, you will find dozens of customization options in our Developer Documentation including the ability to use our API so that you can have complete control over every pixel of the user experience.

• Using CloudSponge

  

• Does CloudSponge also send emails to my users for me?

  No. We're only handling the address book importing part of the solution for you. You'll have to send the invitations or coupons to your users' friends yourself. For transactional email delivery we highly recommend SendGrid rather than using your own mail server.

• Can I customize the CloudSponge widget?

  Absolutely! There are tons of ways you can customize the widget, we've written a whole section about widget customizations in our Developer Documentation.

• Security & Privacy

  

• Does CloudSponge keep my users' address books?

  No. Your user's address book will stay in memory on our servers for a few minutes so that your website has a chance to download it, but then it's wiped from memory and never written to disk.

• How does CloudSponge handle my users' login credentials for the address book sources?

  In most cases, we never see the credentials. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all have delegated authentication frameworks that ensure that their users never have to give their credentials away to third parties like us. Desktop address books like Outlook and Mac Address Book use an applet that your users have to allow to run before we can access their data. For the other address book sources, we never save their credentials to disk and we wipe it from our server's memory after a few minutes.