Hi!
I’ve been doing some research on ways I could encrypt PHP code. I’m working on a web application and, I want the code of the application to be encrypted so I can offer a free trial which expires after 30 days. As PHP is open source, therefore I can’t put in the free trial feature unless I encrypt the code as otherwise users would most probably hack the code and renew their trial.
Anyways, it appears that Zend Encoder is the only way I could encrypt my code. However it costs about $1k and currently thats out of my budget for this application. I was thinking, there’s GOT to be any open source/freeware/cheaper product which offers this functionality, so I’m posting here for help. If you know of any such products, please let me know!
Really? Well, i’m pretty sure the crack isn’t too common… most of the people in my target audience wouldn’t be able to crack it and those who crack it wouldn’t buy it anyway.
Soo, my question stands… are there any free/cheaper/better alternatives to using Zend encoder?
Well, I was thinking that when a customer first downloads the software from my website, I make an entry in the database which stores the date the trial started. And whenever the script runs, it checks with my website to make sure the user has paid or his trial is still running.
Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions or is this topic really going off topic?
Btw have you considered hosting your product (an online demo) instead of letting the prospective clients download it and install it on their own servers. Maybe this scheme is no worky for you?
thanks for those. As for the online demo, I doubt it would work because the script is a website management tool, more like a CMS. So I don’t think many people would want to use it online.
But anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I’m taking a look at them and post my comments here in a sec. In the meanwhile, keep the suggestions coming!
You should take into considerations that you loose ALOT of potential customers when you encode your scripts, me for once would never buy a script i dont have full source to.
Not only can i edit it, if i want to make modifications, i can make sure it doesn’t include malicious code.
And i would hate to be in a situation where say you get out of business and it’s no longer possible to get updates and i have my whole site depending on a script i can’t access. KADABOOM!
Thats a good point. I think i’m going to offer full source code with the purchase of the script, but for the trial period I’ll keep the code encrypted. Would you buy a script that offers full source code with the purchase,though?
"eAccelerator also contains a PHP encoder and loader. You can encode PHP scripts using encoder.php in order to distribute them without sources. Encoded files can be run on any site which runs PHP with eAccelerator. The sources of encoded scripts can’t be restored because they are stored in a compiled form and the encoded version doesn’t contain the source. Of course, some internals of the scripts can be restored with different reverse engineering tools (disassemblers, debuggers, etc.), but it is not trivial. "
