Smart Extrude for Blender

In both Sketchup and 3ds max (probably more modeling programs) there is a smart extrude option where you can select a face or faces and push them right through you model to automatically create an opening, bevel, channel etc. This is a feature that, to the best of my knowledge, Blender lacks. I know there are addons that do this, but the 'good' ones comes as a $ price not everybody can afford. For what it does, Blenders extrude function works well, but it's really quite basic. Happy to be corrected, but this type of functionality is kind of expected by state of the art modellers and Sketchup has had this feature since Jesus was an apprentice carpenter.