SAN JOSE, Calif., July 21 -- The first free integrated CRM and e-mail marketing product for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) has been introduced into the market. vegaPort by Pravega Inc. delivers integrated CRM and email marketing with the speed, power and simplicity needed by time- and resource-constrained small businesses.

By offering it for free, Pravega is challenging the standard industry pricing models.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies have traditionally spent $300 to $3000 on marketing to acquire a single customer. They then would charge those expenses back to the customer in the form of large subscription fees. Pravega gives its software away for free and foregoes expensive marketing. It's a business model that translates into considerable savings for SMBs in these tough and uncertain times.

vegaPort competes with other top web-based CRM systems. Companies with more than 10 employees can save more than $1,000 a year using vegaPort versus competing systems. vegaPort also challenges top e-mail marketing services, most of which cost hundreds of dollars annually. Pravega estimates that more than 500,000 SMBs use expensive products from competing providers. Now vegaPort delivers the same benefits for free by combining the best of CRM and e-mail marketing into a single application that is customized to the specific needs of SMB users.

"We have been serving hundreds of companies in beta testing for more than four months and optimized our product based on their feedback and recommendations," said Gaurav Bazaz, president of Pravega Inc.

vegaPort users can deliver unlimited e-mails to their mass email lists for free using state-of-the-art delivery management technology and leverage powerful list management features to compile detailed information about each subscriber. Users can create lead capture forms with no programming experience and design effective marketing emails with ease.

SMBs can use the free CRM system to track their sales and marketing programs, centralize all customer information and keep records of all interactions in a single place. vegaPort can help companies improve their lead conversion rates, improve customer satisfaction through better coordination between team members and enable automated responses through autoresponders. vegaPort leverages a combination of open source and proprietary software to reduce development costs and transfers the savings to SMBs.

"Pravega is proud to add to the movement towards no-cost business tools," Bazaz said. "Our mission is to save small businesses millions of dollars over the next few years. Well-known incumbent vendors with massive advertising programs charge over a billion dollars in subscription fees to SMBs per year. With our products, SMBs can get out of this trap."

vegaPort CRM and email marketing software is available now from Pravega Inc. Learn more at http://www.pravega.net/vegaport-overview.

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