Podium API
Podium exposes a documented REST API (v4) at developer.podium.com covering conversations, contacts, reviews, payments, and webhooks, with OAuth 2.0 auth. Access is partner-gated: developer accounts take an application and multi-day review, and end customers get no direct path to their own data.
Frequently asked questions
Podium scores F on the API Report Card. Podium exposes a documented REST API (v4) at developer.podium.com covering conversations, contacts, reviews, payments, and webhooks, with OAuth 2.0 auth. Access is partner-gated: developer accounts take an application and multi-day review, and end customers get no direct path to their own data.
Without a usable official API, teams fall back on manual exports, file drops, or one-off vendor integrations. The other option is an unofficial API layer like Supergood that automates the authenticated web app directly.
Podium is a cloud-based customer interaction and lead-conversion platform that bundles SMS/text messaging, webchat, review generation and management, online reputation monitoring, contact/CRM, integrated payments (Podium Payments and text-to-pay), bulk and 1:1 marketing campaigns, and, since 2024-2025, an autonomous 'AI Employee' that answers, qualifies, and books leads 24/7 with a claimed 36-second average response time.
Vertical: Customer messaging / reviews / reputation management / payments for local brick-and-mortar businesses (horizontal SMB SaaS with vertical packaging). A local business owner or front-desk staff log into Podium's web app or mobile app and see a unified inbox of every SMS thread, webchat conversation, Google review, Facebook review, missed-call text-back, and AI Employee handoff.
Podium reports working with 100,000+ businesses as of late 2023, has raised $419M+ in venture funding at a $3B+ valuation (Accel, Summit Partners, IVP, YC Continuity, GV), and at one point claimed that half of U.S. cellphone users had interacted with its platform.
Yes, for any local business that runs customer communications on it, Podium is the system of record for the entire customer interaction graph: every inbound and outbound SMS/MMS thread, webchat conversation, Google/Facebook/industry-specific review (and the response history), review invitation send and conversion data, missed-call text-back history, AI Employee transcripts and qualification outcomes, contact records with consent/opt-in status, Podium Payments transaction history (card and ACH, including text-to-pay), bulk marketing campaign send/open/reply data, multi-location inbox routing rules, and team activity logs.
Founded 2014 in Lehi, Utah by Eric Rea (CEO) and Dennis Steele as a Y Combinator-backed online reputation tool, originally called 'Repdrive'. Rebranded to Podium and expanded into messaging, webchat, and payments.
Developer Portal access requires application and multi-day review, API is not self-serve for individual customers, only for approved integration partners. Webhook events are dropped from the queue after ~10 days; if a partner's webhook endpoint is down longer than that, events are lost permanently with no replay API. Full sourced list under Sources below.
Common alternatives include Birdeye, Yotpo, Reputation.com, Yext, SOCi, Trustpilot. Graded alternatives appear under "More from the report card" below.
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.