14 DAY TRIAL // Telegram has recently announced its Premium tier, and the company has also shared some new information on the number of users currently registered to the service.
Telegram now has more than 700 million active users, and the firm emphasizes the growth “is solely from personal recommendations,” as it hasn’t spent a single cent on advertising and promoting the app.
The debut of Telegram Premium is supposed to help continue the development of the platform, and the company emphasizes that the app will remain free forever. The purpose of the Premium subscription is to provide some exclusive goodies to paying users, with the essential feature package to remain available at no cost.
“As Telegram keeps growing at rocket speed, many users have expressed their will to support our team. Today we're launching Premium Telegram Premium – a subscription that lets you support Telegram's continued development and gives you access to exclusive additional features. This will allow us to offer all the resource-heavy features users have asked for over the years, while preserving free access to the most powerful messenger on the planet,” the company announced in a press release today.
“Today is an important day in the history of Telegram – marking not only a new milestone, but also the beginning of Telegram's sustainable monetization. We believe that Telegram's development should be driven primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.”
The top WhatsApp alternative
Telegram is often considered one of the top alternatives to WhatsApp, especially as it claims its focus is entirely on user privacy.
As a result, its userbase has increased substantially in the last couple of years, especially as WhatsApp has been involved in some privacy debates that pushed many users to alternative platforms.
According to the latest statistics, WhatsApp has approximately 2 billion active users.