Free PHP Encoders, Accelerators and Obfuscators

Protect your intellectual property

You are here: thefreecountry.com (main page) > Free Webmaster Resources > Free PHP Scripts > Free PHP Encoders, Accelerators and Obfuscators

Free PHP Encoders, Accelerators and Obfuscators

If you write PHP scripts for clients, or perhaps sell PHP scripts, you may want to encode your PHP code or even just somehow obfuscate it so that others who have a copy of your script cannot modify them or copy your code or otherwise adapt it for use on machines that are not licensed to do so. Or perhaps you want to distribute a demo script that times out after a period of time. It is for such purposes that the PHP encoders and obfuscators listed here are useful.

PHP encoders precompile your PHP source code into a binary code for execution with the help of an intermediate code interpreter. They are sometimes also called PHP accelerators, since they speed up the execution of your script by precompiling and caching it. PHP obfuscators, on the other hand, merely take your source code and change the names of your variables, constants and user-defined functions to obscure strings of characters. With obfuscators, your code remains in source code form and are actually fairly easily deciphered.

Although not listed in the main section below, if you really need a PHP encoder and accelerator, I suggest that you get one of the commercial ones which are vastly more effective, and have additional features like the ability for you to license your code to run only on certain domains, have an expiry date (very useful for demos for clients to try out before they pay for your software), etc. The two famous ones used by many commercial programs are Zend Guard and the IonCube PHP Encoder.

Unlike some of the free programs, these commercial encoders and accelerators pre-compile your PHP source code into binary code which can be executed on your client's machines with the help of additional programs called "loaders". IonCube also has an option where the binary code is further encrypted, making it even harder than ever to reverse engineer the code. Of the two programs, Zend tends to have its loader (which they call the Zend Optimizer) pre-installed on more web hosts, but IonCube has a better licensing agreement (and it's much cheaper). With Zend, your licence to use the software is only for 1 year. After that year, you can no longer use your software to encode new scripts. IonCube has a more traditional licence where once you pay for the software, you can use it forever (and you get upgrades free for 1 year). IonCube also has the ability to create PHP scripts that will not be accidentally mangled by your users when they upload it using their FTP program. This is a problem with binary files that are given a PHP extension since almost all FTP programs assume that PHP files are text files, and so will automatically modify the text files when they upload it (to change the line endings). Another advantage of IonCube is that if you have a web host that does not preinstall its loader, you can make your scripts automatically execute the loaders when they are called.

Free 3D Software Box Image Makers - create a 3D image of a software box for your program
Free Text Search and Replace Utilities
Free Programmer's Editors and IDEs
How to Register Your Own Domain Name
The Fine Print in Web Hosting: Resource Usage Limits
The Real Meaning of "Unlimited" in Web Hosting
Budget Web Hosting
Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Web Hosting

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book, document or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.