Bitrix24 Telegram alternative: Scalegram against a multi-channel CRM

If you are looking for a Bitrix24 Telegram alternative because you sell inside Telegram as an IB or forex affiliate, the two products answer different questions. Scalegram is the Telegram CRM for IBs and forex affiliates: one AI bot on your own Telegram answers every lead in the language it arrived in, checks the deposit against the broker's own records over a read-only API, opens the paid group and files the client. Bitrix24 is a business CRM whose Contact Center routes Telegram chats from a bot to a queue of employees and turns new writers into CRM leads.

Which one fits depends on who does the replying and what must be checked before a lead gets into your group.

How Bitrix24 connects Telegram

Bitrix24 brings Telegram in through Open Channels, part of its Contact Center. The Bitrix24 help page on connecting a Telegram bot says you need a bot access token from BotFather, which you paste into the channel settings. When a customer writes, "You receive the message in Bitrix24 Messenger", and "If the customer does not exist in CRM, Bitrix24 creates a new lead automatically."

The same page lists the limits that come with a bot connection. "Telegram bots support one-on-one chats only." "Telegram does not share the customer's phone number automatically." Files over 50 MB cannot be sent because of Telegram API restrictions, and a bot token used in several Bitrix24 accounts works only with the account that connected it last.

Bitrix24 also lets a rep start the conversation from the CRM. The page on inviting a customer to chat on Telegram or WhatsApp describes clicking "Invite to chat" in a CRM record's timeline, which needs an SMS provider configured, and says "Bitrix24 saves the full chat history in the CRM entity."

Queues, greetings and chatbots

Open Channels are built for a team. The Open Channels setup guide offers three ways to hand out new chats: evenly across the queue, to the first employee in line with fallback to the next, or to everybody at once. You can switch on an instant greeting and off-hours replies, and choose whether leads or deals are created automatically for unknown clients.

Automated answering beyond a greeting goes through a chatbot. Bitrix24's developer tutorial, How to Create a Chatbot for Open Channels, says such a bot "receives customer requests, sends the first response, and transfers the conversation to an operator when needed." It is built on the Bitrix24 REST API, with code samples in JavaScript, Python and PHP, or with an AI app builder the page names.

Plans and history

The Bitrix24 Contact Center page calls it "Free forever for unlimited users" and describes a flat fee with no per-user pricing. The Contact Center FAQ gives the Open Channel count per plan: one on Free, two on Basic, ten on Standard, unlimited on Professional and Enterprise. The FAQ also says all conversations are saved under Contact Center, Conversations, and that "You cannot delete specific chats or the entire conversation history"; deleting the whole Open Channel removes its conversations.

Give Bitrix24 its due. If you already run your CRM, telephony and email in Bitrix24, adding Telegram as one more channel there costs little and keeps the team in a single tool.

What Scalegram does with the same lead

Scalegram starts from the opposite assumption: nobody on your side is waiting in a queue. The bot does the selling, from the first reply to the open door, and you step in only where you chose to. The order, from the how it works section:

1. It answers in the language the message came in, with your product knowledge, saved replies, pictures, PDFs and cloned voice.
2. An AI condition reads the conversation and decides whether the person is ready, still deciding, or not a buyer, and takes a different branch for each.
3. It sends your broker link, walks them through signing up and asks for the email or account number.
4. It looks that email up in the broker's IB portal or the prop firm CRM over a read-only API: whether the account exists, whether a payment completed, whether KYC passed.
5. It approves the join request to your paid group or channel the moment the person qualifies, at any hour.
6. It files UID, email, broker and a dated note on the client card and moves the stage forward.
7. It follows up with whoever went quiet, written fresh from where that chat stopped, and stops when they reply.

If you want the last word on a moment, such as a stranger claiming a funded account, an Ask Me block pauses the flow until you tap yes or no in your own Telegram. The rest runs without you. The deposit check is the part a general CRM has no reason to build, and it is covered in more detail in how to verify a broker deposit automatically.

The client list and what it stores

Scalegram also connects your personal Telegram account, read-only, and turns your whole contact list plus everyone who ever wrote to you into client cards with stages from New to Churned, tags, notes and an Open in Telegram button. You reply in Telegram itself. No message is ever stored: there is no message table in the product. The connection cannot send in bulk or run drip campaigns; its single write is saving an address-book contact when you click it. The reasoning behind that choice is in why a Telegram CRM should not store your messages.

That is a real difference from a CRM that keeps the full chat history on every record. Some teams want the transcript for quality checks, and Bitrix24 gives them that. An IB who would rather not hold copies of client conversations on a third party's servers gets the opposite design from Scalegram.

Ads tied to deposits

Scalegram's tracked links carry UTM tags and read fbclid, gclid, ttclid and sccid. A dedicated bot watches who joins the channel and reports every subscriber server side to Meta, TikTok and Snapchat, so a campaign can optimise on the people who joined and deposited instead of the people who clicked.

Scalegram vs Bitrix24 side by side

"Not described on the pages we read" means exactly that. Bitrix24 has a REST API, and a developer could build parts of this on top of it. Out of the box, the help pages we checked describe a routing inbox, not a bot that verifies deposits.

Who should pick which

Pick Bitrix24 if Telegram is one channel among many, you have staff who take turns answering, and you want calls, email and a CRM in the same login. It is a sensible home for a support team, and the Free plan lets you try one Open Channel at no cost.

Pick Scalegram if you are an IB or forex affiliate and Telegram is where the selling happens. The work that eats your week there is the late-night reply in Spanish, the "I deposited, let me in" message that needs checking against the broker, and the lead who went quiet two days ago. Scalegram does that work with nobody watching, and the plans on the pricing section start at $99 a month. For a wider look at the category, our best Telegram CRM 2026 list compares the other options, and what is a Telegram CRM explains the basics.

Sources

• Connect Telegram bot, Bitrix24 Helpdesk, checked 5 October 2026
• Invite a customer to chat on Telegram or WhatsApp, Bitrix24 Helpdesk, checked 5 October 2026
• Create and configure Open Channels, Bitrix24 Helpdesk, checked 5 October 2026
• How to Create a Chatbot for Open Channels, Bitrix24 REST API docs, checked 5 October 2026
• Free omnichannel contact center solution from Bitrix24, Bitrix24, checked 5 October 2026
• FAQ: Contact Center, Bitrix24 Helpdesk, checked 5 October 2026

A queue of agents is the right answer when people are paid to reply. When the reply has to happen at 3 a.m. and include a deposit check, the bot should do the work.

— The Scalegram Team

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