How to start
Four things, and you are open.
The whole setup, in the order you would do it. About twenty
minutes, and nothing here needs a developer.
What you need in front of you
- Telegram, on a phone or a desktop — every step but the
last happens inside it.
- A private channel. Not made one yet? It takes a
minute, and it has to be private.
- Stripe, PayPal or a crypto account, in your own name.
You can do the first three steps without it and come back.
Start free
1 day free. Add a card to start; you’re charged only when the free days end, and you can cancel before.
1
Make a bot
Inside Telegram · about a minute
Your bot is the thing that can actually add somebody to a channel and
take them out again. Telegram gives you one in about a minute, from
inside Telegram itself.
- Open a chat with @BotFather and send
/newbot.
- Give it a name people will see, and a username ending in
bot.
- BotFather replies with a long token. That token is the bot — treat it
like a password.
Paste the token in when we ask for it, on the very
last step of connecting a bot. We never show it again afterwards.
Done when your bot replies to /start.
2
Connect your channel
Inside Telegram · about a minute
The channel stays yours and nothing about it changes. You are giving
your own bot permission to work the door, and Telegram does the giving
for you.
- Press Open Telegram to connect on the connect
screen of the guided setup, which sign-up leads straight into, or
scan the code with your phone. Your bot opens with one button:
Connect my channel.
- Press it and pick your private channel. Telegram makes the bot an
administrator there with Invite users via link and
Ban users. Those two are the whole job: one lets
people in, the other takes them out when they stop paying.
- Rather do it by hand? Add the bot as an administrator with those two
rights yourself, and paste a link to any post in the channel. A
channel you add after the first is always added this way, by hand,
on the Channels page.
Not made the channel yet? We show you how. Make it
private: a public channel anybody can find is not a channel anybody
will pay for.
Done when the page says your channel is connected,
and it shows up in your dashboard with a tick beside it.
3
Write a plan
Here · two minutes
A plan is a price, how often it repeats, and which channels it opens.
Each one becomes a button in your bot and a checkout page you can put
anywhere.
- Start with one recurring price. A menu of options is
a decision somebody has to make before they can buy.
- One plan can open several channels, which is how a bundle works.
- You can change the price later. It applies to new subscribers, and
the people you already have stay where they are.
Done when the plan has a checkout link you can
open.
4
Connect your own payment account
Here, and at your provider · ten minutes
Stripe, PayPal or crypto, in your own name. The money settles straight
to you — it never passes through us, and there is no share of it.
- We walk you through it in four steps, two of which are just finding
a key in your provider's dashboard.
- You keep your own refund policy, your own terms and your own
relationship with your provider.
- If you ever leave, your payment account and its subscriptions were
always yours. There is nothing to move.
Done when your checkout page takes a test
payment.
Then what happens
Somebody taps a plan in your bot, or opens the checkout link you posted.
They pay your provider. Within seconds they are in the channel, they have a
receipt, and the date their access ends is written down.
When that date arrives and they have not renewed, they come back out. You
do not have to be watching — we keep checking who should be in each channel
and close the gap, so a missed message from a payment provider heals itself
instead of costing somebody their access.
Everything after that is optional: reminders before a subscription ends,
a message when a card is declined, coupons, broadcasts, importing from
somewhere else. None of it matters until the four steps above are done.