[austinsharp]

Telegram has great features. It's fast, available on every platform, and the clients are open source. I've had good uptake on it among friends and family, especially with the option of easy web and desktop clients.

As others have said it's not as theoretically secure as WhatsApp or (especially) Signal. But I think it benefits from being the main product of a company that is totally focused on messaging, not on advertising (see all of Facebook and Google's messengers). The experience is great and even as they add features, they manage to keep things clean and stay out of your way, so you can ignore all the new features and just use it for simple stuff that it does really well.

That said, I haven't used WhatsApp much because I don't know many people who do. It comes down to where the people you want to talk to are, and if you can influence them to go elsewhere.