>Could you elaborate on this? I personally find that Signal's interface couldn't be simpler, and have on-boarded hundreds of "non-techies" without support or explanation beyond "download an app called Signal and message me on the same number, but on there".

Telegram feels more polished and distinct, for example it has very nice animated emojis. Signal looks like programmer art and a random system SMS app - it's hard to convince people to use it, I started using Telegram with my wife just for the animojis and stuck with it because of a nice desktop app. I got my entire family and some friends on it eventually.

>Given those tradeoffs, Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp is probably a way better choice than Telegram.

I actually like Telegram as a chat app more than those two - Messenger is bloated garbage tied into Facebook which is another bloated garbage platform so I avoid those if I can.

WhatsApp doesn't do cloud sync well actually, my phone needs to be active for webapp to work and when I switched from iPhone to Android and back I would lose history between the two.