VC is a platform for entrepreneurs, authors, and companies that build products, share their experience, and promote goods and services in the digital space. The platform publishes expert articles, case studies, industry news, and native ad formats, while businesses get access to an audience interested in technology, marketing, startups, and entrepreneurship.
In 2022, the VC team launched the paid Pro subscription and chose a Telegram bot as its main tool for sales, payments, and customer communication. Thanks to the puzzlebot Constructor, the product was put together in two weeks with almost no developer involvement, and since then more than 2,000 customers have paid through the bot at least once.
The challenge
In short, they needed a simple tool for selling and supporting the Pro subscription.
The team was looking for a simple, automated way to interact with buyers along the entire customer journey, from first contact to renewal and payment. The bot covered several scenarios at once: communicating with customers and automating subscription purchases, renewals, and payments with no manual operations. Since the platform's audience mainly uses Telegram, it became the natural environment for the project and made it possible to combine support and payments in one channel.
What was done
They considered two options: write the bot themselves or use a no-code builder. For the second option, they needed a convenient visual builder and a ready-made integration with a suitable payment system. In the end, they chose puzzlebot: it offered a fast launch and the ability to connect payments without deep customization.
"The Pro subscription is a solution for companies and authors interested in promoting goods and services on the VC platform by purchasing advertising capacity and native content."
The bot became the product's "storefront" in Telegram: the point of entry, payment, and ongoing communication with the customer.
Launch resources: most of the work was done by a product manager using the Constructor's features
Launch time: the first version of the bot was built and launched in 2 weeks. This let the team quickly test the hypothesis, fine-tune payments and communication, and then scale the scenarios to handle a growing flow of customers
App demo
A user enters the bot, gets information about the subscription, makes a purchase or renewal, and pays in Telegram, while the team manages communication from a single panel.
Manual approvals, shuffling requests between channels, and payment delays are gone — all the key actions are brought together in one flow.
Results
A Pro subscription product in this format didn't exist before. Now more than 2,000 customers have made at least one payment through the bot in Telegram. What proved especially valuable for the project:
The ability to connect the right payment system.
Managing communication with all customers from a single interface sped up support and reduced the risk of "lost" conversations.
In other words, the bot became a working sales and support channel for the Pro subscription, cutting operating costs and speeding up the payment cycle. For paid subscriptions and B2B products, the key metric is often not just revenue but also launch speed, cost per lead, and support workload — and here the "bot + payments" combo made a noticeable difference.
