Hi @baraica - Our main discussion forums are completely open. Prospects would register on our portal as a “registered guest” and then have the ability to participate in the open forums. If/when they become customers or partners, their role is changed to reflect that and they can participate in gated customer/partner only areas. We do have a couple partner prospect roles but as it doesn’t get them additional access, they aren’t used much.

For us, they get the same base rank (Creator) as everyone else. 

On the backend, they get a a custom user role of Prospect (and don’t have the custom user role of Customer/Partner/Employee). This allows both tracking and segmented analytics as well as adjusting permissions for a few places they can’t visit in the community. 

I would recommend putting them into the same gamification system as your customers. They might have a unique role if you gate any customer facing content however.

You never know when someone with a gmail shows up but is actually a customer who knows their stuff. Someone could also be a contractor or an individual who works at a customer org but wants to contribute as themselves on their own email address. Some government orgs do not allow for the contribution of content onto any forums with their government emails. 

You never know when someone moves from a lurker / slow contributor into a paying customer! Just had one last week actually at my organization!

In our community there is no matter is the person customer or not. We have only one gamification system, one ranks system and so on.