Will Telegram’s Premium Subscription help the WhatsApp with Sustainable Monetization?

How does Telegram Subscription = Sustainable Monetization? 

Starting from 19 June 2022, Telegram has started rolling out its Premium subscription for its users. The tech giant announced the official rollout of its paid premium subscription service.  

WhatsApp Rival’s ‘Sustainable Monetization’ 

With this, Telegram marked its first big step towards making ‘sustainable monetization’. Telegram’s paid Premium subscription will cost $4.99/month. For people in India, the subscription will cost around Rs 390 per month. Earlier in June 2022, the instant messaging app announced that it would implement some advanced features behind a paywall and further allow users to access them via a subscription plan. With the release of its Premium subscription, this is the first time Telegram has started a freemium model for its app since it was launched 9 years ago.  

Recently, in 2022, Telegram became one of the top 5 downloaded apps worldwide—with over 700 million monthly active users. To celebrate the achievement, the encrypted messaging platform rolled out its premium service that offers multiple additional features, exclusively available to its paid users.  

In a blog post, Telegram stated:

“The contributions of premium subscribers will help improve and 
expand the app for decades to come, while Telegram will remain 
free, independent and uphold its users-first values, redefining
 how a tech company should operate.”

Features of Telegram Premium 

Telegram’s Premium subscription will cost $4.99/month and will give users access to up to 4GB file uploads, faster downloads, exclusive stickers and reaction, and many more. Premium users will have access to a number of additional features over the non-paying users. They will get double the limits for everything available on the app. They can follow upto 1000 channels, create 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, and add a total of four accounts to a total of four accounts to Telegram instead of three.  

Under Telegram’s Premium subscription, users can avail the following features:  

• 4GB Uploads

  Paid subscribers will be able to upload large files and media each up to 4GB in size. While others will be able to upload files up to 2GB in size and enjoy unlimited storage in the Telegram Cloud for free.

   

• Faster Downloads

  Premium users will enjoy the fastest possible speed on Telegram and also access anything in their unlimited cloud storage at the speed on their fast network without any buffer.

   

• Doubled Limits

  The premium features also include increased limits for almost everything within Telegram where users can follow up to 1000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders with up to 200 chats each and more.

   

• Voice-To-Text

  Premium subscribers can now rate transcriptions of voice-to-text messages on Telegram to help improve the social platform’s features.
   

Is Telegram Premium similar to Twitter Blue? 

In addition to the above features, premium users can pin up to 10 chats in the main list, use longer bios with a link and animated display pictures that will be visible throughout the app. A premium-special badge will set premium users apart from the regular ones.

The badge will imply that the users are “showing that they can help support Telegram and are part of the club that receives exclusive features first.” 

Telegram Premium is quite similar to Twitter Blue which offers access to services such as the Undo Tweet option to revert posting a tweet, a replacement for the edit button that Twitter is currently working on. Subscription plans are effective for those who spend a significant amount of time on a particular app. However, for those who don’t, the features available in the free tier are sufficient for content curation or posting. Simultaneously, a subscription plan also implies a reasonably good proportion of users who like Telegram and want access to additional features.  

Anwesha Mishra

Anwesha has been a creative writer for a while. Currently, on her pursuit of tech writing, she is diving into the realms of technology to produce better content on the forever-changing world of technology. In her free time, you’ll find her humming tunes of her favourite shows or reading a book.