Zend or ionCube Encoder?

[Darren Lewis]

Given the choice between Zend or ionCube for encoding, which would people prefer to use for encoding a commercial application?

I know ionCube can use runtime loaders, so theoretically would be available to a wider customer base if their hosts didn't have Zend Optimizer, or were using the ionCube PHP Accelerator, but are there any other major differences?

The Zend Encoder can be bought as part of the Zend Small Business package, so the pricing is not a major issue between the two.

[Darren Lewis]

Nobody got any views on this?

[Daijoubu]

How about eAccelerator/MMCache?

[Nikolas]

I think eAccelerator is the best, and it is free! Try a search at sourceforge.net

[Darren Lewis]

How easy is it for people to hack files encoded by eAccelerator though, given that it is an open source project?

[Daijoubu]

They're all pretty much the same, files are "compiled" in Zend bytecode
You can't get the source back, even if you try to reverse engineer...