Whatsapp has been the good to go option for many of us considering online messaging service. Speaking of number of downloads via Play store itself Whatsapp has surpassed 1 billion whereas Telegram which is another online messaging service has just crossed 100 million downloads. The fact and figures are sufficient to indicate their popularity however Telegram has some features and options which are far better and more refined than Whatsapp. Do remember that this is just a comparison or rather advantages of Telegram over Whatsapp and has nothing to do with promotion.
Adding more members -
The maximum number of people that we can add in a Whatsapp group is 256. However, Telegram allows for the addition of upto 50000 members which is self explanatory when compared to Whatsapp.
Changing themes -
In Whatsapp we only get the option to change the chat background and the interface background and are devoid of any themes. In Telegram, we can add themes and can also create our own. Hence, Telegram allows in for more customization.
Create Polls and use bots -
Speaking of whatsapp, well, one can only upload status which is available on Instagram as well as on Facebook since they all belong to a single entity although the status feature is not available on Telegram.
These were some of the prominent differences between them. There are many more points that make Telegram a completely different concept than Whatsapp.
The Broadcast feature on WhatsApp is dubbed as Channel in Telegram. Again, in Whatsapp the maximum number of members are restricted to 256 whereas there is no such restriction in Telegram.
Another area where Whatsapp lags is the addition of multiple accounts. Telegram allows for multiple account sign-in and one can manage both the accounts at the same time something similar to Twitter or Instagram where you can jump from one account to the other with just a touch or click.
In Whatsapp and Telegram, we can invite members to a group. However, we cannot hide our contact number in WhatsApp from unknown people which does put our privacy at stake. Telegram enables us to hide our contact details and we can choose to only make our name visible to others hence, there should be no issues with privacy.
The rest of the features like sending location, images, videos, contacts and files remain similar on both however you can save messages in a complete new chat window (in simple terms chat with yourself). For eg. You can send an apk file and also message yourself thereby creating a local backup of files if required. As everything is server based, you can access those files even on other devices with ease by downloading Telegram on that particular device. You can also retrieve all the messages without the need to link your Google account as in the case with Whatsapp hence backup and recovery is hassle free.
Another "Life Saving" feature in Telegram is the ability to edit messages and even delete irrespective of any time limit since Whatsapp allows for deleting messages only upto 7 minutes.
All these features make Telegram superior to Whatsapp. However, Whatsapp being much older and considering its popularity among various platforms previously, it has become almost difficult for us to deviate our attention from it. Even Google's Allo hasn't been able to take a big share.
With these differences, will you prefer to shift to Telegram or else are satisfied with Whatsapp? In our case we use both! Do share your thoughts in the comments below.