hum, as the internal policy here is to not discuss external products, i would suggest to keep it to the level of "yes/no encryption"... ?!

personally, if a tool require that you install something more than the default requirements of the engine, we have a problem... most of the newbies will not be able to install such engine without the help of some support staff, they would even have to hire the coder to be sure everything is fine.

... i think that most of the time, if you check properly, the places where they release encrypted scripts also offer installation at a high rate, even if it takes 20 seconds to install ioncube or something else... that is where they do their profit.