Marketing
How to send Telegram broadcast messages to your customers
A Telegram bot can message everyone who has started it, which makes it a direct, free broadcast list. Here is who can receive a broadcast, the limits Telegram sets, what is worth sending, and how to schedule one and answer the replies as a team.
MonoChat Team Updated: 3 min read
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A Telegram bot can send a message to everyone who has started it. That makes your bot a broadcast list: each message lands in the person’s private chat with your business, they can reply, and the reply comes back to you. Telegram charges nothing for this at normal speed. What it asks in return is that you respect its limits and the people on the list, who joined by choice and can block the bot with one tap.
Who can receive your broadcast
Telegram bots cannot start conversations. A person has to open your bot and tap Start, or add it to a group, first. Your broadcast list is therefore everyone who has done that, which is why the link to your bot matters so much: put t.me/<your_bot> on your website, receipts and social profiles. Our BotFather guide shows how to create the bot and track where people come from with a start parameter.
Channel, group or bot?
| Tool | How the message arrives | Can people reply privately? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channel | A post in a shared feed | No | News and content for a large audience |
| Group | A message everyone in the group sees | Only in public | Communities |
| Bot broadcast | A message in each person’s private chat with the bot | Yes | Offers, reminders and updates that may start a conversation |
Many businesses use both: a channel for news, and a bot for messages that should lead to a question, a booking or an order.
Telegram’s limits
From Telegram’s Bots FAQ (opened 29 October 2026):
- About 30 messages per second for bulk notifications. A list of 10,000 people takes around six minutes.
- About one message per second in a single chat, and 20 messages per minute in a group.
- Paid broadcasts raise the limit to 1,000 messages per second. Messages above the free limit cost 0.1 Telegram Stars each, and the bot needs at least 100,000 Stars on its balance and 100,000 monthly active users. Most businesses never need them.
What to send
- One message, one purpose. A new menu, an appointment reminder, a restock, a holiday schedule. Say what it is in the first line.
- Something worth replying to. A broadcast from a bot is a conversation starter: end with a question or a clear next step (“Reply with your size and we will hold one for you”).
- The right people. Send to the customers it concerns, not to everyone who ever started the bot.
- A sensible hour. Send in your customers’ daytime, and schedule ahead rather than sending at midnight.
- A way out. People can stop or block the bot at any time; telling them so in your welcome message builds trust.
How to send a Telegram broadcast with MonoChat
Connect your bot first (Settings › Chat › Channels › Connect › Telegram Bot, then paste the token from BotFather). Then:
- Open CRM and select the contacts, or apply a filter or a saved filter. With no selection, every contact is included.
- Click Send Bulk Message (it reads Send Bulk Message to Selected when you picked contacts).
- Choose your Telegram bot channel.
- Choose Normal Message to send text, an image, a video, an audio file, a document or a sticker, or Custom Flow to start an automated conversation, for example one that asks a question and books an appointment.
- Choose Immediately, or Later with a date and time, and continue.
Follow the send in System › Bulk Messaging: each recipient’s record shows whether the message was sent and its delivery status. Replies arrive in the team inbox, next to WhatsApp and your other channels, where an AI assistant can answer from your own content and your team takes over when needed. The Telegram broadcast page has more examples.
You can start free at app.monochat.ai.
Sources
Put this into practice with MonoChat