Just wonder which one is the better to use to ofuscate php code?

ioncube, sourceguardian, other...

I am all for Ioncube. There is much debate as to which is better in this particular topic. While we are on the topic most would debate between Ioncube vs Zend. The majority of the linux hosts will have Zend installed by default but many vendors encode with Ioncube so the two ofuscate technologies are usually coupled!

On the windows server side, ioncube is a bit behind since there is still no PHP 5.3 support or clear instructions and the instructions that are available between windows server 2003 and windows server 2008 even with the same auto installer. So it depends on how your customers may use your solution.

It may be worthwhile to have multiple versions. Kayako for example has two versions each support ioncube and zend respectively.

I think its more easier to go with ioncube as final user can only use the loader and don't require any server side installation, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think its more easier to go with ioncube as final user can only use the loader and don't require any server side installation, correct me if I'm wrong.

ionCube and SourceGuardian both have this feature, although recent PHP versions don't work with this. On older PHP versions, it also only works on some servers - depending on the configuration, the loaders will still need to be installed in the php.ini. Moving forward, it looks like the server admin will need to take some action to enable ionCube, SourceGuardian and Zend.

I would personally avoid Zend, they are forever increasing their prices and their software isn't that great - it's not been updated in ages and has been easily reversed for some time. ionCube is a great company to deal with, and I use their solution at the moment (although note that there are now freely available tools out there to reverse ionCube PHP4 encoded files into source - the ionCube PHP5 encoder is still reasonably OK at the moment). SourceGuardian seem to be gaining more traction in the market, I tried their solution a number of years ago and it was quite similar to ionCube (although Nick from ionCube will normally point out some technical differences with the way they do things!).

I would personally avoid Zend, they are forever increasing their prices and their software isn't that great - it's not been updated in ages and has been easily reversed for some time. ionCube is a great company to deal with, and I use their solution at the moment (although note that there are now freely available tools out there to reverse ionCube PHP4 encoded files into source - the ionCube PHP5 encoder is still reasonably OK at the moment). SourceGuardian seem to be gaining more traction in the market, I tried their solution a number of years ago and it was quite similar to ionCube (although Nick from ionCube will normally point out some technical differences with the way they do things!).

All obfuscation software will have similar problems. The point of obfuscation is to make it non-trivial to retrieve the source, not impossible. Someone with the right skillset will usually be able to get at obfuscated code no matter how recent the software that you're using is.

All obfuscation software will have similar problems. The point of obfuscation is to make it non-trivial to retrieve the source, not impossible. Someone with the right skillset will usually be able to get at obfuscated code no matter how recent the software that you're using is.

Don't get me wrong, I agree completely with this (I've made this point in other threads on WHT and beyond) :) However, that also doesn't mean you shouldn't try and pick the one that offers the best protection at the moment.