Introduction

Telegram is one of the most popular instant messaging apps, giving Facebook-owned WhatsApp healthy competition. The app offers almost all the features found in WhatsApp for effective communication.

Apart from direct chats with your contacts, you can join two types of communities on Telegram: Telegram Channels and Telegram Groups. They are similar to WhatsApp Groups and Broadcast Lists.

What is a Telegram Channel?

A Telegram Channel allows you to broadcast your message to a large number of subscribers.

There are no limitations on how many people can join a Channel, but they cannot interact with each other. Telegram Channel admins are the only ones with the right to post one-way messages.

What is a Telegram Group?

A Telegram Group is like any other messaging app group.

All Group participants can communicate with each other in the Group and share multimedia files, while the admin holds the right to restrict members' interaction.

When creating a new group in Telegram, the system will create a basic group by default. Basic Telegram groups have limited interaction functions. And they lack many key functions compared to supergroups. Therefore, it is recommended that you upgrade the group to a supergroup.

A Telegram supergroup can accommodate up to 200,000 group members. The owner of a supergroup can assign administrator privileges to other members.

Types of Telegram Channels and Groups

Telegram Channels and Groups can both be public or private. As the name suggests, public Groups and Channels are easily accessible by searching their username in the search bar, while you can join private Groups and Channels only via an invite link.

Owners and admins are the only ones with access to the Group joining link.

If the group or channel you want to join is private, it will not appear in search results. You will have to use an invite link.

However, someone already in the group must send you a link to join private groups or channels. You can also use links to join public groups or channels, and anyone can find and share those links.

Telegram invite links start with t.me. Clicking on one will open your Telegram app, and then you can click Join to join everyone else in the group or channel. Your messages and interactions in these groups won’t show up anywhere else if it’s a private link unless people take screenshots.

Difference between Telegram Channels and Groups

1. Accessing the Profiles of Your Fellow Members

Telegram Channels are more private when it comes to other members' information since you cannot see their profiles. Even if someone from your contact list belongs to the same Channel, you can't find out.

Telegram Groups, on the other hand, are more public in this regard. Whether or not someone is on your contacts list, you can easily access their profile.

You can interact with them in the Group and message them privately as well. However, it depends on the privacy settings on the account that you want to connect to.

2. Rights You Have as an Admin

As an admin of a Telegram Channel, you can post any message, add or remove any member from the Channel, and terminate the Channel at any time. Almost no interaction between members means that all you need to do is update your Channel regularly.

3. Number of Members

Any Telegram Channel can have an unlimited number of participants, and members are called subscribers.

Initially, you can only have 200 members in a Telegram Group, but if you upgrade it to a supergroup, you can have up to 200000 members.

4. Determining the Engagement

Every message in a Telegram Channel has an eye button at the lower right corner showing how many subscribers have viewed it. Depending on the average message views and subscriber count, you can determine how active a community is.

On the other hand, it's hard to gauge the engagement of a Group as you cannot determine how many members are actively participating in discussion regularly.

5. Getting Feedback

While you can receive feedback from your community via Telegram Groups, there is no equivalent way to reach your community via Telegram Channels.

By discussing an idea with your Group members, you can fine-tune it, which is not possible with your Channel subscribers. Telegram allows you to link your Telegram Channel to the Telegram Group directly.

Doing this will automatically post the messages to your Group when you post them on your Channel.

This way, you can have discussions with your audience, hear their feedback and enjoy the rest of the Telegram Groups features. Both Telegram Channels and Groups offer a range of features that streamline communication between family, friends, and colleagues.

A Telegram Group will be a good choice if you want to have a casual discussion with your community where everyone can share their opinion.

On the other hand, creating a Telegram Channel will serve your needs if you want to limit posting content to yourself.

Telegram Group or Channel? Which One Is Right for You?

Since you can interlink a Group with a Channel and restrict Group activity to make it a Channel, why not try out both to find out which one works best for your community? How to know whether you have joined a Telegram group or channel? One of the easiest ways to identify whether you have joined a Telegram channel or group is to look for the ‘online’ text at the top of the app. If you can see the number of online participants at any time, then you’ve joined a group.

In contrast, look for the eye icon next to the messages to identify a Telegram channel. Also, if you see something like ‘2 million subscribers' and not the online status, then you are added to a Telegram channel.

Conclusion

Telegram is a great messaging app for you to chat with people and create a group or channel.

Telegram keeps on evolving with time with amazing new features. If you are using an older version of Telegram, you should update it to try out the latest features.