There are many messaging apps in existence and chances are, you have not heard about the majority of them.
The one messaging app that almost everyone is familiar with is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world at the moment with millions of active users daily.
Aside from WhatsApp, another messaging app that has been gaining much attention is Telegram.
Although not as popular and widely used as WhatsApp is, Telegram has been able to attract the attention of a lot of people as its download rate increased steadily over the years, mainly due to concerns that people had over WhatsApp’s privacy policy. Both of these apps come with some great features that users love to use.
Right now, Telegram is regarded as the direct rival of WhatsApp. In that case, we decided to put the two messaging apps side by side to find out the one with the best features and usability.
So if you have been trying to find out the best app among the two, follow on the journey below.
Table of Contents
Functionality
When it comes to functionality, both apps provide users with several features to make for a great chat time.
Telegram allows its users to chat with friends and create groups. They can also send media including stickers and files.
However, end-to-end encryption is only available for secret chats and not general chats.
However, Telegram has amazing features such as self-destructing messages, the ability to delete messages sent in groups and to contacts. Media upwards of 2GB can also be sent on Telegram.
Messages sent in Telegram are stored on the cloud and this allows users to access them easily when they log in to their Telegram accounts from any device.
However, it is not easy to create a backup of your chats on Telegram. Telegram also has channels that can be created by anyone.
Whatsapp on the other hand provides end-to-end encryption for all chats along with the ability to delete chats from both contacts and groups.
Users can send media at a limit of 16MB, which is a huge difference from the 2GB offered by Telegram.
WhatsApp users can also share what they are doing with their contacts through the status update where all contacts can view what is posted there.
Telegram does not have this kind of feature at the moment. Backup of chats and media can also be done easily on WhatsApp.
Although WhatsApp chats can be stored on the cloud, that is mainly for backup purposes. You cannot log in on another device unless you have logged out of the previous device.
Groups
When it comes to groups, Telegram groups can hold more than a thousand people while WhatsApp groups are limited to only 256 people. only 8 of these people can have a video call at a time in the group.
As stated earlier, files up to 2GB can be shared on Telegram while the limit of files that can be shared on WhatsApp is 16MB. There is no video call capability on Telegram. This is available on WhatsApp.
Security
All the chats on WhatsApp come with end-to-end encryption. so only the sender and the recipient can see the chats. However, messages that are backed up to the cloud storage are not encrypted.
Telegram on the other hand uses client-server encryption. This means that the Telegram company can have access to your messages at any time. End-to-end encryption is only available for secret chats that are sent on the app and the user must be the one to enable the end-to-end encryption.
Multi-platform Support
Apart from the mobile app, Telegram can also be installed on your computer with the PC app.
You log into the computer app with your number and get access to all your chats. However, you must have Telegram installed on your smartphone already.
Whatsapp however uses an extension app on your PC that allows you to transport your chats from your smartphone to your computer so you can continue chatting from there.
The PC is essentially mirroring the chats from your smartphone and you can only use it by scanning a QR code that appears with your phone.
Your phone must be on the WhatsApp app while using the computer app.
Costs
Both are free to download and use for all users. Users can download both apps from their various Play stores and app stores.
Conclusion
It seems that each app has a feature that gives it an advantage over the other. As you can see, it will be quite hard to choose but most people would go in for WhatsApp due to its popularity, which means that they will be able to connect with more people than they could on Telegram.
However, you should note that Telegram is gaining a massive following of its own and it’s getting popular with time. I am sure that you can make a discerning choice among the apps for yourself after reading through this article.
