Last month, there were rumors of Telegram wanting to introduce a paid version of the app. According to details, the subscription based version will come with all the features of the free version, as well as added features. While many were wondering if the rumor were true or not, the company’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov has come out to officially confirm the report.
This was made known via a post Pavel Durov shared on the platform. In his post, the company boss revealed that Telegram Premium will be launching before the end of the month. He stated that the premium version will allow users to acquire additional features, speed and resources. According to him, all existing features will remain free, and there will be plenty of new free features coming.
The statement reads;
Since the day Telegram was launched almost 9 years ago, we’ve been giving our users more features and resources than any other messaging app. A free app as powerful as Telegram was revolutionary in 2013 and is still unprecedented in 2022. To this day, our limits on chats, media and file uploads are unrivaled.
And yet, many have been asking us to raise the current limits even further, so we looked into ways to let you go beyond what is already crazy. The problem here is that if we were to remove all limits for everyone, our server and traffic costs would have become unmanageable, so the party would be unfortunately over for everyone.
After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That’s why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first.
Not to worry though: all existing features remain free, and there are plenty of new free features coming. Moreover, even users who don’t subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits: for example, they will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.
While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.
Telegram has been one of the best messaging apps to rival WhatsApp. Its regular updates and unlimited features have given it an edge over other messaging apps. As the premium version comes on board, many are wondering with the future holds for Telegram as a whole.
Source: Telegram