Channel, group or bot: which to use for what

The most expensive mistake I have seen made here has nothing to do with content or budget. It is choosing the wrong container at the start and realising six months later, when there are already people inside and migrating them costs more than doing it right would have. So it is worth five minutes now.

The difference between the three formats is, fundamentally, the direction in which messages flow.

The channel: one-way broadcast

A channel is a broadcast list. Administrators publish; subscribers read. Nobody else can write in the main stream, and subscribers cannot see each other.

Its great virtue is that it needs no moderation. Since nobody else writes, there is no conversation to get out of hand, no spam, no arguments at three in the morning. The cost of running it is exactly the cost of writing what you publish, and it does not grow as the audience grows.

It also has no subscriber ceiling, so today's decision does not limit you tomorrow.

Choose it if what you want is to publish and have it arrive. This is the most common case and, in doubt, usually the right answer.

The group: conversation in every direction

A group is a collective chat: every member can write and everyone reads everyone. Supergroups take up to 200,000 members, according to the official documentation.

The virtue is obvious: conversation happens, people get to know each other, and the space stops depending on you posting every day. When it works, it sustains itself.

A group is not a channel with extra features. It is a moderation commitment with a rota.

That is the part always underestimated. An active group needs rules, people to enforce them, and sustained presence. An unmoderated group does not stay still: it turns into spam, and a group full of spam drives away exactly the people you wanted to keep. It is a format that can give a lot, but it charges up front and in labour.

Choose it if the value you offer lies in people talking to each other, and you genuinely have the capacity to moderate. If you cannot answer that second part honestly, choose a channel.

The bot: one to one, automatable

A bot is an automated account each person converses with separately. It can reply, show button menus, remember the state of each conversation and run its own logic.

It has two properties that make it particularly interesting for distribution:

• It receives information about where each user came from. A bot link can carry a parameter the bot receives when the person starts it. It is the most precise way of knowing who came from where, and I explain it in detail in the article on measurement.
• It allows a tailored first message. Unlike a channel, where everyone lands on the same thing, a bot can greet people differently depending on where they came from.

The trade-off is two significant limits. The first is technical: somebody has to build and maintain it. The second is by design — a bot cannot start the conversation. It can only message people who messaged it first. That is a deliberate anti-spam protection with no way around it; worth knowing before designing a plan that assumes otherwise.

Choose it if you need precise attribution, a different welcome depending on source, or any flow that requires responding to each person separately.

Decision table

And they combine

It is not an exclusive choice, and the most common combination is a sensible one: a channel as the main publishing space, with a bot behind it for whatever needs personalisation or measurement. The group comes later, if a real reason appears for people to talk, and someone is willing to look after it.