Telegram bot and Mini App development

What a Telegram bot can take on

A Telegram bot can live in the chat, inside a Mini App, or in both. The public demos on this site — a digital shop, a paid community, inquiry notifications and a record export — are flows we run ourselves. They are not client case studies, and they do not limit what a new project can be. This page is the Telegram-specific view. The platform-neutral brief lives on custom bot and AI assistant development.

Start from the job, not from a feature list. One clear action for the first version is more useful than a bot that tries to do every department's work on day one. Later steps can be added once that action is accepted.

• Customer service and orders: answer from your price list, capture a lead, and hand unclear cases to a person.
• Shop and payments: browse a catalog, take payment for a digital good, and send the file or the delivery update.
• Memberships: paid access, a reminder before access ends, and a view for the person who runs the group.
• Internal reports: a daily summary, a threshold alert or an approval button in a chat the team already opens.
• Monitoring: an alert when a public price, stock figure or status changes, inside the target site's rules.
• Takeover: the original developer is gone, the bot is failing, and someone still needs it to run.

Demos you can open

These are our own demos and one internal project. Sample data is labeled as sample data. None of them is a customer logo, a user count or a testimonial.

The digital shop is a working Telegram demo. A buyer browses products, pays with Telegram Stars and receives a digital file. An administrator uses a separate workspace for orders and support. Looking around the preview is free. A purchase test on Telegram costs 1 Star, which is a Telegram charge, not a development fee.

The paid community is a working Telegram demo. A one-time Stars payment buys a number of days. It does not charge again by itself. The read-only preview does not change a membership and does not take payment.

Website inquiry notifications are the flow this site uses for its own form. A saved inquiry can notify Telegram. The picture on the home page is an illustration with sample data and does not send a message.

The record export is a small web demo with a real save-and-search API and a CSV download. It is not connected to Google Sheets, Drive or a CRM. Those connections are assessed per project, from the API and the access you can provide.

Telegram Stars for digital goods

Telegram's Bot Payments documentation for digital goods and services says those sales inside Telegram are made in Telegram Stars, with the currency code XTR. Users buy Stars from Telegram. The bot sends an invoice, must answer the pre-checkout update within 10 seconds, and must receive a successful-payment update before it delivers anything. Answering the pre-checkout alone is not proof that the payment finished.

The bot owner stores the payment identifier, because a later refund uses Telegram's refund method. The owner also provides /terms and /paysupport, handles disputes, and remains responsible for the purchase. Telegram's document says Stars can be used for Telegram Ads or accepted as the reward Telegram assigns to each Star. Turning that balance into a payout is between the bot owner and Telegram, under Telegram's developer terms. We do not collect, hold, reconcile or pay out customer funds. We only record that a payment event happened and then deliver the digital good the project agreed.

The same document points to a separate flow for physical goods. If your product is a physical shipment rather than a digital file, say so at the start so the payment path is scoped against Telegram's physical-goods rules instead of Stars.

Mini Apps, groups and API changes

A Mini App is a web screen opened inside Telegram. Use one when people need to browse a catalog, a member area or a form that is awkward as a stack of chat messages. Many bots never need one. Buttons and short replies are enough for a notification, a simple order or an approval. The shop and membership demos use Mini Apps. The inquiry notification does not. Whether you need one is part of the scope, not a default.

In a group or a channel the bot can only do what that chat allows. Removing a member, posting into a channel or reading certain updates usually means the bot has been added and given the matching administrator rights. Those rights belong in the acceptance checklist. A screenshot of the desired button is not the same as permission to perform the action.

The Bot API changes over time. A bot that stays in production needs someone to notice those changes, keep the process running, and apply small fixes. That work sits inside monthly hosting when you want hosting. The bot token stays in the BotFather account you control. It does not go into the repository, the website or a chat log.

Taking over a bot you already have

If you still control the bot in BotFather, the username and the existing chats can stay with that bot while the code moves to a server and accounts you control. If the old bot cannot be recovered, a new bot is a new conversation and people have to start it. Orders, memberships or other records can be imported when you actually have an export. Without source code, the important flows can be rebuilt from the data and APIs that remain. Screenshots alone are not enough to promise a line-by-line edit.

The assessment itself is described on the takeover and repair page. Hosting after the repair is optional. Takeover and repair start with a free check, then a quote for the problem. Hosting and maintenance is a monthly fee, priced by complexity. The quote follows the assessment. Price depends on how many features you need, which platforms and external systems it connects to, whether it takes payment, and whether it includes a Mini App.

Price, source code and launch

Custom Telegram work starts at US$500. The quote depends on the agreed features, the interfaces, and the checks you will use to accept the bot. You can take the source and deploy it yourself, or ask us to deploy it. Ongoing care is a separate agreement: monitoring, backups, incidents, Bot API changes and small edits inside an allowance. If hosting ends, you receive the code, the data and deployment notes.

Before development we write down who uses the bot, what they put in, what they should get back, and what happens when Stars payment, a file or an outside service fails. That list is the acceptance checklist. It is also how a later change stays smaller than a rewrite.

Work we do not take

We do not take gambling, adult content, fake engagement or account farming, spam, or scraping that bypasses captchas or logins.

Questions before you start

Who withdraws Telegram Stars?

You do. Stars from digital goods are credited under Telegram's rules, and any reward or ad spend is between the bot owner and Telegram. We do not operate as a payment processor and we do not withdraw the balance for you.

Can existing users move with the bot?

If you still control the bot in BotFather, the username and the existing chats stay with that bot. A replacement bot is a new chat. Records move only when you have an export to import.

Do I need a Mini App?

Not by default. Use a Mini App when a catalog, a member area or a longer form is hard to do with buttons. A notification or a short approval often stays in the chat.