WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal. Which One Should You Choose? 

Hello hustlers, I hope you all are doing well. WhatsApp is one of the principal places for most of us to message our family and friend online. With over 2 billion users worldwide, it is majorly used in America, India, Europe, and many African nations. 

Now why we are discussing all this? Recently WhatsApp had announced some new privacy policies which mentions that the WhatsApp will share data with Facebook and if the user will not accept this new privacy & policy until 8th Feb 2021, he/she will no longer be able to use WhatsApp. 

Hence in this blog, we will be looking at some of the alternatives of WhatsApp such as Telegram and Signal and I will be comparing WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal. 

Before that let’s try to understand what data WhatsApp will be going to share with its parent company Facebook. 

As mentioned by Facebook the data they will drive out of the WhatsApp database is as follows:

• Profile Name
• Profile Picture
• IP Address
• Battery Level,
• Signal Strength
• App Version
• Browser Information
• Mobile Network
• Connection Information including phone no, mobile operator, ISP, etc.
• Device Operation Information and Identifiers (Including identifiers unique to Facebook company products associated with the same devices or accounts.)

That‘s a lot.

Why WhatsApp is doing so? As quoted by Facebook, they introduced these new policies so that they can have integration across the different facebook products (nonsense). 

If you peak into the history of WhatsApp, when it was bought by Facebook in 2014, they had clearly mentioned that time that they will not merge WhatsApp with any of their products and WhatsApp will be a stand-alone app and this promise is already long ago broken.

You may be thinking that Facebook had now started collecting these data, if you think so then my friend you may be in myth. Facebook is sharing these kinds of data from the year 2016, even the European Union had penalized Facebook to conduct such practices. 

Facebook is already utilizing WhatsApp data to target Facebook ads and also selling the data to other companies. These policy updates are just mere announcements of what they are already doing at their backend. 

As these policies are so harsh, we got to know that these policies don’t apply in the EU and we all know that the EU takes online privacy very seriously. 

Now let’s talk about some technical and feature level aspects of WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal and a comparison between them.

WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal

WhatsApp

First, let’s talk about WhatsApp, most of you may already know a lot about it. WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by two ex yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton. The USP of WhatsApp back then was that you can privately chat with your known online. It is a free service and totally ad-free. Then it was bought by Facebook in 2014.

WhatsApp Features

Now let’s talk about some of the main features that you get in WhatsApp.

• End-to-End Encryption
• Groups Chatting (Up to 257 members)
• Broadcast
• Video & Audio Calling
• Group Video Calling
• WhatsApp Emojis
• WhatsApp Web
• Document Sharing
• Inbuilt Camera
• 24hr Story Posting
• Direct Story Sharing on Facebook through WhatsApp
• Share Live Location
• WhatsApp Pay

WhatsApp is also coming up with some new features such as:

• Video Group Chat upto 50 Members 
• Video Calling Participant of your Choice in a WhatsApp Group Call
• Video Calling Facilities for Desktop (WhatsApp Web)
• WhatsApp Multi-Device Support Simultaneously 
• 138 New Emojis
• WhatsApp QR Code to Instantly Add New Contacts Instantly
• WhatsApp Animated Stickers (Like that of Instagram)
• WhatsApp Web Dark Mode 

This list goes on and on. WhatsApp is really trying to puss the limits of their products and wants to build a one-stop solution for all the needs related to networking, more like WeChat. 

It’s cool to know that WhatsApp is doing innovations and setting up new limits. 

Telegram

Telegram is also freeware, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging app like WhatsApp. Telegram provides end-to-end encrypted calls and optional end-to-end encrypted “secret” chats between two online users on smartphone clients, whereas the cloud chats use client-server/server-client encryption.

The telegram is written in C++ and can be run on many different platforms such as IOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web platforms. 

Telegram is available to its users in 14 different languages. Telegram’s founders are Nikolai Durov, Pavel Durov, Axel Neff and CEO is Pavel Durov. 

Telegram operational center is currently based in Dubai and held by company Telegram Messenger Inc and do you know all its app are open source. 

It was initially released in 2013 and gained its popularity when Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014. Currently, telegram surpassed 500 million monthly active users benchmark and as with the new policy updates by WhatsApp, WhatsApp users are shifting to Telegram.

The feature for which I use Telegram and probably you may also be using is their channels which let us download movies 😁 isn’t it? Telegram USP is their Channels and as per my thought, a lot of the users on Telegram are just for that feature only.  

Telegram Features

Now let’s talk about some of the main features that you get in Telegram:

• Telegram Channels (Can have an unlimited amount of subscribers)
• Use Multiple Accounts Simultaneously on Single App
• Cool Telegram Stickers

• Telegram Online Payment Option

• Edit Photos/Videos Before Sending them
• Secret chats & Self Destruct Messages 

• Terminate Active Sessions
• Easy to Clear Telegram Cache 
• Large File Sharing compatibility (Upto 1.5 Gb)
• Message Drafting Features

• Telegram Custom Folders
• Share Live Location (Like that of WhatsApp)
• Inbuilt Conversations Locker (No need to add a third-party app for it)
• Telegram Bots (As App is open source it can be customized as per user taste)
• Free Unlimited Online Storage (Cool isn’t it)

This list can go on and on, and not these because it’s open-source, one can also customize it as per his/her taste. 

Telegram is also having a good amount of user base and many of us had installed it on our phone but its only downfall is, it’s users are not active like that of WhatsApp.

Signal Messenger

More like WhatsApp, Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging service developed by the non-profit organization Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger.

Its founders are Brian Acton (the co-founder of WhatsApp) and Moxie Marlinspike and it is also an open-source platform like that of Telegram. It was initially released on July 29, 2014, but recently gained its popularity.

In Dec 2020 it was having 20 million active users and after gaining popularity due to WhatsApp controversies and getting endorsed by Elon Musk, Signal is able to acquire 525 million monthly active users by 14 Jan 202, in just a few days Signal had seen more than 2500% of the increase.

There is a long history of Signal, if you want to learn more about it then check out the Signal Wiki page.   

Signal Features

Now let’s talk about some of the main features that you get in Signal.

• End-to-End Encryption
• Share Message in Text, Audio, Video Format 
• Audio and Video Calling Features 
• Make Privacy Stick (Encrypted Stickers)
• Signal Sticker Simulator (Create Your Own Stickers)

• Signal Group (Up to 1000 Members)
• Secret Chats Feature
• Self Destructing Messages System
• No Ads. No Trackers (As Quoted by Signal)
• Signal Desktop Feature
• Signal Erase History Feature

This is not all there are many other basics features in Signal like that of WhatsApp

WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal, Comparison Table

Below is the Comparision table between WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal. Through this, you will get a more clear picture of some of the basic feature differences.   

Source: www.meganvwalker.com

Then who is the winner?

WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal, Features

If you had read all the features that I had mentioned above for WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal and also if you check out the comparison table, then you can easily guess that the clear winner is Telegram and then succeed by Signal.

WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal, User Base & Usability

WhatsApp got active 2 billion users globally. No doubt Whstaspp is ahead of Telegram and Signal and it’s more convenient to use it as most of your knowns are on these platforms, but still, the question is at what cost?

Which is Better Telegram vs Signal?

If you take my recommendation I will recommend Telegram over Signal as Telegram got more features than Signal, though Signal is gaining more popularity, its feature compensates for that. 

Also Signal is a pretty new platform and we had a lot to see in the future for Signal.

Though I use all three platforms. 

If you want to join our Digital Marketing Community on Signal then check out this link 👉 https://surajmishra.co/signal-digital-marketing-community 

Do join if you want to learn about Digital Marketing and Online Earning related stuff.

Conclusion

In this blog, we had looked out what all WhatsApp and Facebook are doing in favor of their company, about the new WhatsApp policies, and what all WhatsApp data will be shared with Facebook. Also, we had done a comparison between WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal.

From this whole blog it can be concluded that the new WhatsApp policies are very harsh and against the privacy of WhatsApp users. It is no good to use such a platform and it will be better if we can shift to Telegram or Signal, but we also know that it will not be possible for most of us as our knowns are on WhatsApp and currently WhatsApp is a monopoly in terms of the end-to-end encrypted online messaging app. We are the reason for creating WhatsApp a monopoly and a company monopoly never falls in favor of its customer. 

It is well said that “If you are not paying for it, you become the product” and that is the same case between WhatsApp and us. WhatsApp was started as a sole platform focusing on user’s privacy, also till 2019 it was mentioned on the WhatsApp official website that privacy is in its DNA, and by 2020 they had removed this tagline, which clearly showcases that towards what WhatsApp is evolving, isn’t it?

It is to be noted that I am not asking you to leave WhatsApp, but use all these three apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal) parallelly and analyze which is better for you. 

Also, let’s wait for 8th Feb 2021 and see what stand Facebook will take for WhatsApp users. 

I hope you enjoyed this blog and got some value out of it.

Do let me know which App you prefer WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal and why so, in the comments below. 

Till then, keep learning…

Suraj Mishra

Suraj Mishra is a Digital Marketer, Brand Consultant, Blogger, founder of Genrk, and owner of this website. He always has a motive for sharing what he knows. Through these blogs he tries to help entrepreneurs, letting them know all the things that are needed to grow business online in this digital era.