A notification only exists if it gets seen. That obvious sentence is the entire discipline of choosing a channel — and yet most businesses default to email because it is familiar, or SMS because it is old, without running the numbers. Let us run them.
The three channels, side by side
| Criterion | SMS | Telegram bot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per message | Near zero, but platform fees grow with list size | Paid per message, every message | €0 — the Bot API is free; you pay only ~€5–20/mo hosting |
| Typical visibility | ~20% open marketing email; transactional better but often delayed | High open rates, but limited to plain short text | Push notification in a personal chat; read like a message from a friend |
| Speed to be seen | Minutes to hours (or never, in Promotions) | Fast | Seconds — push arrives instantly |
| Rich content | Full HTML, attachments | 160 characters, links look suspicious | Buttons, images, files, formatted text |
| Two-way dialogue | Slow, threading chaos | Technically yes, practically no | Native — reply, tap a button, complete a flow |
| Opt-in barrier | Email address + consent | Phone number + consent | One tap on the bot link |
The arithmetic at 1,000 notifications a month
Say your business sends 1,000 messages a month — order confirmations, reminders, alerts. Over SMS at typical per-message rates, that is a recurring bill of tens of euros every month, forever, growing with your volume. Over Telegram, the marginal cost of those thousand messages is zero: the Bot API charges nothing at any volume, and the same €5 server sends ten or ten thousand. Email sits between — cheap to send, but for time-sensitive messages you pay in a different currency: attention that never arrives.
The rule of thumb
If the message must be seen within minutes — confirmations, alerts, reminders — Telegram. If it must be kept and referenced — invoices, contracts, receipts — email. If the recipient may not have a smartphone — SMS keeps its niche.
Honest wins for each channel
- Email wins for formal records: invoices, terms, long-form content, and anything a customer may search for a year later. It is also the only channel every single customer has.
- SMS wins for reach without apps: one-time codes, and audiences where smartphones or messengers cannot be assumed.
- Telegram wins for everything conversational and time-critical: order updates, booking reminders, support dialogue, internal team alerts — at zero marginal cost.
The architecture that beats all three: primary + fallback
The mature setup is not "pick one" but a hierarchy: Telegram as the primary channel for everyone who tapped Start once, with email as the automatic fallback for those who did not — and SMS reserved for the rare case that justifies its price. This is precisely how we wire notification layers into existing systems: your system fires one event, the dispatcher picks the cheapest channel that reaches that user. Customers get speed, you get the bill of the free channel for the majority of traffic.
Frequently asked questions
Are Telegram notifications legal under GDPR / marketing rules?+
Transactional notifications (order status, reminders) go to users who explicitly started your bot — a clear opt-in. For marketing content the same consent rules apply as everywhere: ask first, make leaving easy (/stop).
What about customers who never joined the bot?+
They keep receiving email — the fallback tier. Over time the bot link in every email and order page converts the active portion of your audience to the faster channel.
Is WhatsApp not the same thing?+
Functionally similar, economically not: the WhatsApp Business API bills per conversation and requires provider onboarding. Telegram's free Bot API is why the experiment usually starts there.