When comparing MightyText vs Telegram, the Slant community recommends Telegram for most people. In the question“What are the best alternatives to Pushbullet?” Telegram is ranked 4th while MightyText is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Telegram is:
Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, documents, and even executable files. Drag over files for practically any time up to 2GB in size. Images can be compressed, too.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Read and send texts from all your Android devices + Web
MightyText syncs your SMS between your phone, tablet and the web interface. This means you can now read and send SMS from whatever device is most convenient at the time.
Pro Easy to get going as it uses your current phone number & SMS
MightyText uses SMS, so the people you message don't need to download the app in order for you to message them. This makes the transition from plain SMS to MightyText very easy and unlike Google Voice you keep your existing number.
Pro Great Gmail plugin
The gtext Gmail Plugin lets you both manage and send texts from within gmail. Texts are labeled and searchable within gmail and you can message contacts just like its a Gchat.
Pro Desktop/Tablet UI optimised for making texting faster
MightyText has a special view on their desktop and Tablets that make participating in multiple conversations simultaneously very easy.
Pro Gives useful desktop notifications from your phone
MightyText gives you desktop notifications for new texts and calls with the ability to quickly reply from your computer. There is also a really cool feature that shows you your current battery life on your phone as well as low battery alerts no matter where your phone is.
Pro Easy sharing of photos & videos from phone
Using the toggle to turn on the photo and video sharing feature allows for sharing of both file types easily.
Pro Instant sync & easy sharing of photos & videos from phone
Photos and videos can be sync'd from ones PC to phone as well as easily shared through ones phone. This makes for a convenient way to access all of ones photos/videos in order to always have the accessable to be sent in messages.
Pro Easily send group messages
Users can add multiple contacts to a group message that gets sent to all recipients at once when sent, which is great for times when a user is trying to coincide info with a bunch of people such as a group going out for the evening or work related exercises.
Pro Match the rest of ones device with themes
Users can theme MightyText to their liking, making a more customized looking app that can fit with other themed UI elements of the OS.
Pro Easily schedule messages
Users can set up schedules for their messages for when they want one to go out but know they won't be close to their phone or just want to have a particular time to send something without having to do it at that specific time.
Pro Text directly from Facebook
Using a Chrome extension users can send texts directly from within Facebook on ones desktop.
Pro Free and convenient large file sharing
Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, documents, and even executable files. Drag over files for practically any time up to 2GB in size. Images can be compressed, too.
Pro Free of cost
The application is available free of cost.
Pro Privacy focused
In addition to the end-to-end encryption [only in secret chats] that provides privacy to communications, the app also includes self destructing timers for chats, and the ability to permanently delete messages, yours and theirs, from your and their devices.
Pro Media messaging
Videos, gifs, images, geolocation, and documents.
Pro Channels for one way broadcasting
Broadcasting channels suitable for announcing things.
Pro Beautiful UI
Very customizable with a lot of clean looking options.
Pro Possible to send photos and videos without compression
Pro Supergroups of up to 200,000 people
In Supergroups, anyone along with admins can delete their messages from all sides. A message can be pinned to the top. All of the user's messages can be deleted by an administrator, and they can be banned and reported as well. Supergroups can have a public link (outside of Asia, due to high spam volumes), which is also a username.
Pro Two-step verification
You can set up an additional password to your account, which can be reset by your email. You don't have to use an email if you do not want to. If you lose access to your email or forget your password, you will be able to reset it via text message if your account is over seven days old and will receive it within a week (in case you recover anything before then).
Pro Secure
Pro Saved messages
You can write messages to yourself. You can write some notes, add links, and see everything across all your devices.
Pro Cloud chat keys are kept in different jurisdiction
Even though encryption used for cloud-based storage (e.g. Gmail, Facebook, iCloud) may not be as secure as end-to-end encryption or zero-knowledge storage, Telegram does the most that it can by holding keys to chats in different jurisdictions, requiring intergovernmental cooperation to obtain the keys. This is aside from whatever other security measures have been taken, of course.
Pro Multiplatform native client apps
There are native desktop, mobile and web client apps, that are optimized for speed and are light on memory usage.
Pro Open source client apps
Client apps are open source, making whole service more trustworthy.
Pro Unlimited storage
Unlimited number of files can be stored forever on the cloud. You can upload files up to 1.5 GB each.
Pro Voice and video messages
You can post voice and video messages if you are too lazy to write text messages.
Pro Group Voice Chat
This Discord-like feature adds to the interactivity of the application.
Pro Pinned Messages
You can pin messages to the top of groups or supergroups so members will see them when opening the group.
Pro Self-destruct messages
Messages in individual chats can be set to self destruct on a timer. They will disappear after the timer expires.
Messages in all new chats can be set to self-destruct with a global auto-delete timer in Settings > Privacy and Security > Auto-Delete Messages.
Pro Edit or delete messages after sending them
Pro Banned in China
Pro Save time with inline bots and link previews
Unfortunately, on the desktop videos don't play, but images are viewable without visiting popular websites like imgur and Instagram.
You can play YouTube videos and others within the app, so you don't need to embed code or anything.
With inline bots, such as @gif, @pic/bing, @vid/YouTube, etc, you can look things up without leaving the client or chat that you're in. Simply type the name and some keywords and wait for the results to load.
Pro @mentions
You can ping people to get their attention by @mentioning them.
Pro Desktop app handles HiDPI
The desktop app has a built in setting to scale the UI of the app up to 200% which allows for those with 4k monitors/screens to use the app without scaling issues.
Pro High quality calls
Uses the latest GPL audio codecs, such as Opus, an adaptative high-quality codec that supersedes AAC at any bitrate.
Pro Customer support is within the app
Although it's volunteer based, but still pretty top-notch if available, which it tends to be.
Pro Large groups can have channels called 'Topics'
Topics are now available in groups of 100+ members and have a sleek two-column layout and new buttons to quickly navigate.
A default topic called General is now in every topic group, holding the group’s service messages and previous message history.
Pro Popular in the USA
On SimilarWeb you can see that Telegram is on the top 15 among all communication apps.
Cons
Con Uses SMS for all messages
MightyText does not support data messages, so you will still be billed as per your carrier rates for every SMS you send.
Con Not fully open source
Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone, but the backend software is not open source. Therefore 100% privacy can not be evaluated.
Con Can only be used with a phone number
It is not possible to activate and use Telegram by mail etc. You need a phone number.
Con Only "Secret Chat" messages are encrypted end to end
The only way to get end-to-end encryption (client-client) using Telegram is to use the Secret Chat function, anything through the service is server-client encrypted. Also secret chat is only implemented in the mobile apps, meaning there is no way to encrypt messages end-to-end when using the desktop client or the web browser client.
Con "Secret Chat" feature is not available for desktop client
Secret chats with end to end encryption are only available on mobile apps.
Con No source code sintax highlighting
Telegram does not have source code syntax highlighting, making it difficult to share code snippets.
Con Does not work for visually impaired
Doesn't work for visually impaired.
Con Does not support spherical 360° photos
Spherical 360° photos becoming more popular these days, but Telegram does not support such format.
Con Does not support text messaging
You can NOT make it your default text messaging App.