IonCube Loader is a software tool, which is necessary to run files which are encoded with ionCube PHP Encoder. The latter is an app that is used to make PHP code human unreadable, to protect it from reverse engineering and / or illegal usage. A lot of script-driven apps, in particular discussion forums, content management systems and e-commerce solutions are encoded with ionCube PHP Encoder, so if you purchase a script and you find that ionCube is among the hosting environment prerequisites, you have to make sure that your hosting server has the instrument pre-installed. Although it is not that hard to install it when you have your own server, it's close to impossible to do that on a shared web hosting server as the PHP environment shall have to be precompiled and all the clients on the server shall be affected.
IonCube in Shared Web Hosting
IonCube Loader comes with all shared web hosting packages which we supply, so when you need it in order to install and run some script application that needs it, you can enable it with a click from the Advanced area of the Hepsia Control Panel. Because you are able to switch the PHP version that is active for your account in the same section, you'll have to activate the instrument for every new version that you set. If you're more skillful, you'll be able to employ a php.ini file in a domain or subdomain folder and set the PHP version as well as the status of ionCube Loader for that particular website only, without affecting the whole account. This way you are able to manage both new and older script apps for multiple websites inside the same account - a thing that you won't be able to do with many other hosting service providers available on the market.