Emerald8 vs Payplans

Sorry I mean to say . "a deal breaker".

I do not know why you think Emerald is encrypted at all. It is not mentioned anywhere. It is absolutely not encrypted.

Answering for question why? The answer is simple. Because it is better :)

Look, Emerald is a successor of Mighty Membership which was successor of JContentSubscription one of the best subscription extension for Joomla 1.0

Emerald is 7 yeas of maturity. most probably it will already include everything you want. It will work with any extension. And our support is good :) And that matters.

If you use Cobalt 7, Emerald is the only Membership solution which can provide a deep integration up to the field level of Cobalt 7.

After you install Cobalt, you might realize the additional possibilities through a combination of the 2 MintJoomla solutions.

See the screenshots of Cobalt options for article and even individual fields. No other extension (as of now can provide this).

The extension is not encrypted. I have not tried Payplans, but to help you with your decision, you might explain your intended use a little more detailed, and I am sure you will get an answer how to apply the functionality of Emerald to your case.

Really depends on your goals and workflow. What is your site concept and setup, what exactly do you want to restrict? What is the main purpose for using FUA? (I assume, you mean FrontendUserAccess)