Replacing a Banned Bot

Each project has one bot: the one your members buy through, message for support, and receive their invite links from. When Telegram bans it, revokes its token or deletes it, checkout stops, the portal's "Start" button leads nowhere, and nobody can be messaged.

The Project Bot recovery puts a new bot in its place without losing the member chats. Every member's private conversation is bound to your project's bot record, not to a token; the recovery writes the new token into that same record, so as soon as a member presses Start on the new bot, their history, their links and their subscription are all there.

Before you start

You need a new bot token from Telegram's @BotFather — the same steps as when you first connected the project, and the recovery page repeats them beside the form: /newbot, pick a name and a username, copy the token. On Growth, if you registered a standby bot ahead of time, you can skip BotFather entirely.

Option 1: switch to your standby bot (Growth)

When a healthy standby bot is registered for the project, the recovery page opens with Your standby bot … is ready, naming it, and a Switch to Standby button. Press it and the standby's token is written into the project's bot record: every member chat stays bound and follows it, the webhook and commands are registered, and the standby slot is emptied so you can register a new one when you have a moment.

If our probe found the standby itself no longer answering Telegram, the page says so and offers the token form instead.

With Automatic Failover switched on, you do not have to press anything: the moment the probe finds Telegram refusing your bot outright, the platform performs this same switch by itself, emails every member reachable by email the new bot link at the per-email fee you accepted, and tells you what it did.

Option 2: connect a new token

The page refuses a token that is already connected to another project (yours or anyone's), and only the project's owner can run the recovery — a teammate with project permissions sees the page but cannot recover on the owner's behalf.

Tell your members

The new bot has the same members, but Telegram will not let it message anyone who has not pressed Start on it yet. That is the one thing this recovery cannot do for you, so the page ends with Tell Your Members:

• An announcement to copy. A short text, in your language, that names the new bot and asks members to press Start. Post it in your channel, your group, your newsletter — wherever your members already are. Copy Announcement puts it on your clipboard.
• Email Your Members. One click emails every member who has an email address, the one they verified on the portal or the one they paid with, the new bot's link and, when the project has a public portal, the portal link. Each email costs $0.01, added to your transaction fees on your next invoice; the button names the count and the total before you confirm (Email 240 Members? … about $2.40). Members who have already pressed Start cost nothing, because they are not emailed.
• Download Member List (CSV). Free. Every member with active access or a date still to come, pass and season-ticket holders included, with their name, the email they verified or paid with if any, Telegram id, plans, when their access ends, which resources they hold and whether the bot could reach them on Telegram. Send the announcement your own way.

Members who open the portal see the new bot's Start button there as well, and every invite link they hold keeps working.

What the recovery records

• The history row reads Old Bot replaced by Fresh Bot, with the project's name.
• Your Project Bot allowance is spent for 90 days. Account and channel recoveries are unaffected.
• The open Project Bot incident resolves, the dashboard banner disappears, and connector.connected fires for anyone listening.
• You receive the closing report by email.

There is no undo for a bot recovery: the old bot is gone on Telegram's side, and nothing about your members changed.

Example: a bot banned on a Saturday morning

A trading educator wakes to find their project bot banned overnight — a competitor mass-reported it. The hourly probe had already opened the incident at 03:00 and the email is waiting.

They open the recovery page, see Telegram restricted or banned the bot that serves your project at the top, and press Recover on Project Bot. They had registered a standby bot on Growth two months earlier, so the page offers Switch to Standby; one press and the project is back. They copy the announcement into their channel: "Our bot moved — press Start on @educator_standby_bot to keep receiving your links." Because 140 of their 380 members never opened the bot beyond buying, they also press Email 140 Members and accept the $1.40 on the next invoice. By 09:20 the checkout works again, and the report email lands at 09:21.

Two months later, if the standby is banned too, the Project Bot allowance is still spent — that is when the fair-use rules send them to support, who look at why two bots were banned.