“Any group that can’t find a common platform is in the right place with us.” So says Simon Dürsch, who founded the startup Clup.life together with Christian Borchert. Clup.chat is part of Clup.life, a planned exchange platform between clubs and their members. Clup.chat is a service that allows users to connect group chats from WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. These group chats are then automatically synchronized between messaging services. Other messengers such as Discord, Skype, Threema, Slack and many more will follow. There is no need to install any other messengers or apps and you can continue to use your existing messenger. Clup.chat is now available for free as “Early Access” for all users.
The principle is simple: chat groups are set up not only in WhatsApp, but also in Signal and Telegram. A bot programmed by Clup.chat is then invited to these three groups. The startup connects the groups on the various platforms together via a website. As a result, the bot will also publish every message you post in the Telegram group, for example, on Signal and WhatsApp. The bot talks in their respective groups, posts the chat name of the original author of the original message, and broadcasts it. The whole thing works with texts, images, videos and, with the exception of Telegram, also with voice messages.
The founders want to introduce Clup.chat in anticipation of the Digital Markets Act. This law, which should arrive later this year, will force WhatsApp to be interoperable with other messaging services. But it will be a few years before this applies to chat groups. We are talking about 2025 or 2026.
This is how Club.chat works
The service is expected to be free for every user in a basic version when it is introduced on a regular basis. The idea: if you create and sync several groups as a user, you should then pay for them. The service is free for some group members. But in practice there is still a problem. Because at least currently it is not possible to use existing WhatsApp groups with Clup.chat because the bot cannot access them. Therefore, a new group should be created on startup and each user should be migrated to the new group. Especially with larger groups, it can be a problem that not everyone makes the change.
Another problem can be data security. Because the bot breaks end-to-end encryption. But the manufacturers promise: apart from pure messages, no data will be transferred between messaging platforms. It’s not a Signal user’s mobile phone number that suddenly gets synced back to WhatsApp. However, the startup’s approach, which is still in its early stages, is unique in this form and offers interesting future prospects. The startup’s servers are located in Germany.
