101–110 of 114 posts
I always wondered how telegram could afford being free. A chat is expensive to run, a chat with gigantic media quotas even more, and they don't have ads. There is no way their premium plan cover their cost, espacially with their extensive bot API that multiplies their traffic tenfold. And now they add free hosting of bots on top? How the hell are they doing that?
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
Same. I used to use telegram for everything and then stopped after I realised it wasn’t really and to end encrypted. The bots were super useful. I used to have one I could ask different bus times for. Was so much better than the app the local bus company had made.
For private chats I use WhatsApp yes. But telegram has its uses. Why does it matter that telegram can see your local bus times that are published online anyway?
I always wondered how telegram could afford being free. A chat is expensive to run, a chat with gigantic media quotas even more, and they don't have ads. There is no way their premium plan cover their cost, espacially with their extensive bot API that multiplies their traffic tenfold. And now they add free hosting of bots on top? How the hell are they doing that?
Is it? A mid-size server can support couple of million of users. Storage of large files may cost something but not the chat service is super simple and cheap to run.
Pretty neat!
(Meanwhile Whatsapp's API-based bot is typically only free at very small volume or during specific free windows how are they so far behind?)
Dude.. how do I even enable that serverless toggle? It's not even there. I have updated my app just now. "In @BotFather, open your bot → Serverless and turn it on" .... nop... that setting isn't even there.
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
I use a signal api on a daily basis for all my agentic chatting and notifications about energy prices and server downtime notification. Setup was quick enough but it needs a real phone number once during setup which is kind of a hassle. still better than using telegram which has no encryption for the bot backend so the devs can read everything you write
I always wondered how telegram could afford being free. A chat is expensive to run, a chat with gigantic media quotas even more, and they don't have ads. There is no way their premium plan cover their cost, espacially with their extensive bot API that multiplies their traffic tenfold. And now they add free hosting of bots on top? How the hell are they doing that?
> A chat is expensive to run Is it? A mid-size server can support couple of million of users. Storage of large files may cost something but not the chat service is super simple and cheap to run.
Then you got misbehaved scripts, ddos attempts, authentication for every message, encryption...
Yeah, it's expensive as hell, even with an optimised erlang backend.
In fact, if they manage to get all that down to one cent per user per month, which is very cheap for such a service, it's still 10 millions to run just in hosting.
telegram is full of bots and spam. before it was a better WhatsApp alternative. now either WhatsApp or Signal.
They should start charging for it. Like not a lot, maybe just a coffee a month. That should keep the bots away.
This is cool. I wish Signal had a bot API like telegram's.
I wish WhatsApp did... hopefully it goes the way of BBM and a more developer friendly platform becomes the norm among normies.