Until recently, anyone who opens the Telegram app for the first time saw the promise that the chat service would always remain free, without ads and subscription costs. However, the app developers are coming back and launching a Telegram Premium subscription. What does such a subscription entail and is it worth it?
Before you delete Telegram directly from your phone: CEO Pavel Durov has already reassured users of the chat service that all free features in Telegram will also remain free. So nothing changes in your groups and conversations. Durov also says that new, future features will not only be reserved for paying users.
But it goes without saying that as paying users you can expect more functionalities.
Lots of extras
A big advantage of a Telegram subscription is that the current limits are significantly increased. For example, you can link four accounts to Telegram, mark 10 stickers as favorites and participate in a thousand groups or channels.
In addition, it is possible to send files up to 4 GB, where this is 2 GB for free users. Furthermore, there are of course no advertisements to see (although there is not much advertising anyway), you get exclusive stickers and a Premium badge, so that everyone can see that you are a paying user.
Telegram Premium also gets new features, including a speech-to-text option to translate received voice messages into text.
According to Telegram, the Premium subscription ensures that the free version can continue to exist.
Cost
Competitor WhatsApp has also been a paid service for a while. After the first year, users paid 0.99 euros per year to use the chat app. In 2016 it was decided to cancel all subscriptions.
Also read: This is how you switch from WhatsApp to Telegram
A Telegram subscription is significantly more expensive than 0.99 euros, but the chat service also offers more extra functions than WhatsApp at the time. An official price has not yet been announced, but indications are currently emerging of $4.99 per month for iOS devices and $3.99 for Android devices. It is not known whether this will also be the prices in euros.
Not very interesting
Telegram’s Premium plan probably won’t be of much interest to most users. The extra functionalities are especially useful for those who really use the app intensively. Think of business users, who communicate with large groups and want to send a lot of large files.
For many others, the free features will suffice.
†