Easiest Way to Host a Telegram Bot

Similar to Discord bots, Telegram bots using libraries like `node-telegram-bot-api` or `python-telegram-bot` usually utilize long-polling. This means the script must run continuously without sleeping.

Long Polling vs Webhooks

There are two ways a Telegram bot receives messages:

1. Long Polling: The bot script opens a connection to Telegram's servers and waits. This requires an "always on" background worker.
2. Webhooks: Telegram sends a POST request to your web server when a user sends a message. This allows your app to sleep when inactive because the POST request will wake it up.

The Always-On Setup (Long Polling)

If you don't want to deal with SSL webhook callbacks, stick to long polling. To deploy this, ensure your primary executing script is defined in your `package.json` (Node) or you configure the specific start command (Python) in the cloud provider.

Security Best Practices

Always keep your HTTP API token provided by the BotFather secret. Commit your code to GitHub, but set the BOT_TOKEN strictly within your cloud platform's environment variable interface.