Pravega Inc., which offers free CRM and Email Marketing software for small and medium businesses, has upgraded its free CRM and Email Marketing application, vegaPort, adding many features to meet the requirements of advanced sales and marketing users.

The company has also announced that it now has over 1000 companies using the free CRM system to manage their sales and marketing programs across many different industries.

Officials with Pravega said that the integrated CRM and email marketing application's user base includes consulting firms, financial service providers, commodity traders, real estate agencies, technology resellers, non-profits, startups, wholesalers, IT service providers and businesses from many other industries.

According to company officials, the size of companies using the system ranges from small one person shops to organizations with large employee bases.

Company officials said that new features have been added to the system based on user feedback as well as strategic relevance.

This, company officials said, includes sophisticated access controls so companies can limit access to various modules based on employee roles.

Talking about the features, company officials said system offers Email dropbox feature that allows seamless email-to-CRM integration so that users can link all email interactions with contacts back into the CRM.

It also offers a powerful segmentation feature allowing users to sort and create new lists from their subscriber base using a large set of parameters and flexible criteria.

As well as Google (News - Alert) contacts integration that allows users’ to import all their contacts from Gmail into vegaPort CRM. And finally a complete spam and rendering testing capability that allows marketers to test their emails before sending them out.

All these upgrades give users considerably more power in managing their customer interactions and driving sales and marketing programs efficiently.

"We are making great progress in our mission to cut software costs for small businesses. The strong response to our offering proves that high quality software can be delivered for free." said Gaurav Bazaz, founder of Pravega, in a statement.

Company officials also announced that the company will be making the system available globally starting mid-September, allowing non-U.S. companies to easily sign up and use the system as well.