Telegram is #2 in Top 10 Business Messaging platforms

Positions in ratings

#2 in Top 10 Business Messaging platforms

#3 in Top 13 Video Calling apps

Alternatives

The best alternatives to Telegram are: Signal, WhatsApp, Discord

Latest news about Telegram

2022. Telegram is now offering a Premium subscription



Telegram is launching a Premium subscription, with hopes of capitalising on its considerable growth. Telegram Premium is priced at $5 per month. The subscription provides a flurry of new features in addition to those that are already available for free. Among these is the ability to upload larger files — up to 4GB in size — and download files faster. There are also doubled limits for everything in the app: follow up to 1,000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, pin 10 chats, save up to 10 favorite stickers, and add a fourth account to the app. Other Premium tools include unique stickers (some with full-screen animations), unique reaction emojis, premium badges, and voice-to-text conversation.

2021. Telegram added group video chat and screen-sharing



Telegram now allows to video chat with up to 30 people. The new capability lives within the Voice Chat feature. Whenever you start a voice chat room, a camera icon will now appear. All you have to do is tap on it to enable your video. As with other video conferencing apps, like Zoom and Google Meet, you can make a video fullscreen and also pin a specific person to the center of the call. That way, when someone joins the call, it'll stay focused on them. Telegram added the ability to share your screen, too. While on video, you have the option to either switch back and forth between your camera and the content on your screen or display both simultaneously.


2019. Telegram now allows to kill chat history



Telegram has added a feature that lets a user delete messages in one-to-one and/or group private chats, after the fact, and not only from their own inbox. The feature allows a user to selectively delete their own messages and/or messages sent by any/all others in the chat. To delete a message from both ends a user taps on the message, selects ‘delete’ and then they’re offered a choice of ‘delete for [the name of the other person in the chat or for ‘everyone’] or ‘delete for me’. Selecting the former deletes the message everywhere, while the later just removes it from your own inbox.


2018. Telegram’s new widget lets businesses connect with users



Messaging app Telegram rolled out a web login widget. The new feature will allow website owners (business owners) to connect with Telegram users right from their site using a Telegram bot. Matching the bot with a web plugin creates a system that could allow businesses to send reminders, confirmation of sales, updates and more information direct to customers via chats. Recall, that Facebook last year launched a plug-in that lets businesses connect with users via Messenger, while it is also developing business-focused apps to let companies tap into its 1.5 billion monthly userbase with payments set to arrive soon, too.


2017. Telegram adds unsend feature



Messaging app Telegram adds “unsend” feature which lets users retrieve (i.e. delete) messages within two days of sending them. Secure messenger Signal also recently added an ephemeral messaging feature, back in October — albeit for ‘tidiness’, not privacy. Telegram’s unsend feature works within one-to-one and group messaging scenarios, and has to be enacted within the 48 hour window. It says the idea is to serve users with ‘morning after messaging regret’ by letting them scrub stuff they wish they’d never said.


2016. Telegram released Bot Platform 2.0



Messaging platform Telegram announced a 2.0 update to its bot platform  - the biggest update since launch last year.  The update brings the ability for devs to build bots that can send any type of content supported on Telegram, such as documents, MP3s, videos, stickers, animations and contacts; support for location-based services; and the ability to deeply integrate with other services based on users’ phone numbers. It’s also adding inline keyboards that can be structured to mesh with a particular bot’s messages — so users can tap on pre-determined buttons to respond to the bot, rather than needing to type out specific instructions. Telegram has built four sample bots to show off the new features: @music, a bot for searching for and sharing classical music; @youtube, a bot for searching and sharing YouTube videos; @foursquare, a bot for finding nearby restaurants and places to share addresses with friends; and @sticker, a bot for finding stickers using — you guessed it — emoji as the start point for a sticker search.


2015. Telegram launched public chats - Channels



Secure messenger Telegram added new feature, that will be usefull for business - Channels. It's a new tool for broadcasting your messages to large audiences. Channels replace the old Broadcast lists and are better in every way. They can have an unlimited number of members, they can be public with a permanent URL and each post in a channel has its own view counter. Views from forwarded copies of your messages will be included in the total count. Last but not least, new members can see the entire message history in a channel once they join — all the way to day one. Channels are available in Telegram's iOS and Android apps.


2015. Telegram now lets developers create smart chat-bots



Popular messenger Telegram has launched a new Bot platform that allows third-party developers to create Bots which are simply Telegram accounts operated by software sporting AI-like features. Examples of this might be an image bot integrated with the Bing Image search API or support bot that can resolve your issue step-by-step. Bots can even provide custom keyboards, so users will not have to type anything. New Bot developers only needed a few hours to build these bots. They just generate a key with @BotFather and use a simple https API to control the bot. Telegram Bots can also go viral. Any forwarded message contains a link to its original sender. This means any message from your bot forwarded to a person or group is a messaging equivalent of a retweet – thus making bots inherently viral. All bots have an Add To Group and a Share button as well.


2014. Telegram messenger is attracting business teams



Messaging app Telegram, that makes a great play of its secure, encrypted platform, is going after a more business-focused, demanding niche than its competitor WhatsApp. Creator, Pavel Durov, says that there are more and more small teams switching their collaboration from e-mail to Telegram. Telegram can basically solve some of the same tasks but is more secure and several times faster. Durov says a potential key to Telegram’s rising popularity is that users like the ability to sync their Telegram mobile messages with Telegram’s desktop and tablet apps. This is something they can’t do on Whatsapp, which has a largely consumer base in emerging markets. Thus more key tasks, such as for business like sharing documents and files, are easier on Telegram. Telegram now claims to have over 50 million monthly active users, sending 1 billion messages daily.