Telegram has announced the premium tier that comes with a charge of $4.99 or Rs. 469 a month but offers a host of intuitive features.
The latest update of the app has gone live on the App Store for Apple devices and while it offers most of the features free, there are some additional features that require users to pay a subscription fee.
The premium tier and its features are not available for Android as of now – hence the same is missing from the Play Store. But we expect it to arrive on the Android side of the world as well pretty soon.
What does Telegram Premium offer?
A lot, in case you are a user. To start off, the premium tier comes with an option to organise the chats in a better way. Users will be able to pin up to 10 chats in the main list, can join up to 1000 channels and can connect up to 4 accounts. Users will also have an option to organise their chats in up to 20 folders each holding up to 200 chats.
The premium tier also increases the maximum size of file transfer and allows users to transfer files with up to 4GB in size compared to 2GB as available earlier.
In case the recipient of this large file is on Telegram Premium, they will be able to download it faster as the premium tier does not limit the download speed for attached media and files. While means that not only you can share large files but people will be able to download them instantly as well.
Premium subscribers will not be subject to any advertisements in public channels and will also get access to unique animated reactions and premium stickers which will be regularly updated.
Users will be able to save 400 GIFs and 10 favourite stickers. There will be an option to add a longer bio in case you want to share more about your likings, preferences and more. Apart from other addons, the premium tier will also add a premium badge on the profile – similar to what Elon Musk is suggesting for Twitter Blue.
Free version continues to get new features
That being said, in case you think that you can still live with the basic version that shows you ads and has slightly fewer benefits, you can still do so. The basic version remains free and will continue to get new features.
However, Telegram has been offering its services for free for a long time and is among the few worthy WhatsApp alternatives.
Adding new features and managing the massive database of users, though, requires a lot of money and this is what Telegram is trying to raise money directly from its users. However, it needs to be seen if the users are okay to pay for these additional benefits and help keep the ship afloat.
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