I think the Connect product has so much powerful potential as a community platform. I keep wanting to commit to using it because I love the feature-set and can only imagine how great it will be in the future. Unfortunately as a Solopreneur interested in using it to communicate with external users, Connect, in it's current form fails me in the following ways:

1.) No forum access for Guests

2.) No mobile app access for Guests

3.) Sub-par mobile browser experience for all

4.) No custom app access for Guests

5.) Easy for Guests to accidentally create Zoho account instead of portal access account. 

Honestly, I see Connect as one of the most powerful Zoho apps. We are in a community-driven world and Connect does so many things all in one. Unfortunately it is not ready for my use case at this time. I think my use case will become a common demand and would give Connect amazing traction when it is ready. 

Please do not hesitate to call on me for help in making the product more competitive. 

I'd also like to thank vignesh.venkatesh V from Zoho for the personal help as I tried to make the Connect platform, in it's current state, work for my project. 

I'd love to hear from others as to how they feel about the product. Please do tell me if you use it primarily internally, or externally as well. My biggest concern is for how it behaves with external partners (guests.)