Ladies of Reddit who have tried menstrual sponges, how was your experience?

Howdy all. I've been really invested in seeking out reusable options for periods recently and recently Erika Moen's site featured a page about using sponges (The site is NSFW! Just as a warning.). I talked about it with a friend who I've been ranting to over the course of my whole ordeal with finding the right reusable option for me, and she just dismissed it and said that using sponges sounded gross. I'm a little put off by actual sea sponges since they were alive once and were in open ocean but I'm really trying to be more open minded- they're not that far off from tampons, right? I've tried both disposable and reusable cups that I just can't seem to get in there comfortably, tampons have been irritating me over the last year or so so I've been avoiding them, and when I run out of Flexfoam and have to wear other pads I feel like I'm in diapers. I'm getting sick of spending so much money on my period every month, but investing in reusables that I can't use (nearly $80 on the different kinds of cups I've bought!) isn't really ideal either.

My first post about this got deleted because the title wasn't descriptive enough, but I hope that this one suffices.

Have any of you ladies tried menstrual sponges before? Did you have a good experience? Were there any specific problems that you faced? Please let me know! Sorry for the long post.

EDIT: Fixed the link!