Why We Label Every Unfinished Product — And the One Question It Hands You For Free
Our product catalogue labels every build by real stage — live, early access, labs, by engagement. That same discipline hands you one question that exposes any vendor selling you a roadmap instead of a product.
You've paid for a feature that didn't exist yet. Maybe not once — probably more than once. A software quote lands with a roadmap item glowing near the top, you sign, and eighteen months later it's still "coming soon." That's not a technology problem. It's a labelling problem, and it costs SME budgets real money every renewal cycle.
We've sat on the buying side of that table too — chasing vendors for features we were already paying for. So when we relaunched our own product catalogue at pharoahtechnology.co.uk/products/, we did something most software sellers won't: we told you, plainly, what isn't finished.
Six products, four honest labels
Every build on our page carries one of four stage labels. Not marketing copy — an operational fact about what you'd actually get if you signed today.
- Live — shipped, billed, supported. SOLAI (solai.space) sits here: live, from £49/month, doing the job for the customers using it right now.
- Early access — the engineering works, but we're still shaping it against real usage. GhostWire is at this stage. Ask, and we'll tell you exactly what's still moving.
- Labs — research with no promised delivery date. Secure OS is a labs programme. We won't sell you a timeline we don't have.
- By engagement — scoped per client, not sold off a shelf. Fusion works this way: the price and the plan start with a conversation about what you're actually trying to solve.
Why this should matter to you, not just to us
You're not reading this to buy Pharoah software. You're reading it because you sign supplier contracts, and most of those contracts have the same problem ours used to have before we fixed it: a feature page that quietly blurs "built" into "planned."
Every SME owner has felt the sting once the gloss comes off — a discovery call three weeks into onboarding where "that feature's actually still in development" gets said out loud for the first time. That's not a technical delay. That's money you allocated against a capability that didn't exist when you signed.
The fix isn't complicated, and it isn't ours to keep. It's a single question, and you can ask it of anyone trying to sell you software this quarter.
The one question to ask before you renew anything
Before your next software renewal or new-vendor pitch, ask straight: "For each feature I'm paying for, what stage is it actually at — live, in testing, or still on the roadmap?"
A vendor who answers cleanly just became a stronger supplier in your eyes. A vendor who dodges, hedges, or reframes the question just told you something important about the contract you're about to sign.
That's the whole discipline behind our own four labels — SOLAI live and billed, GhostWire in early access, Secure OS explained as labs, Fusion scoped through direct conversation. Nothing on our page implies more than it delivers, because we'd rather you trust a shorter list of true claims than a longer list of hopeful ones.
Ask that one question on your next supplier call this week — it costs you nothing, and it's the fastest way to find out which of your vendors are selling you a product and which are selling you a roadmap.