Is ionCube PHP Encoder PHP accelelator?

Question

So I´m testing out some PHP accelelators and came across ionCube PHP Encoder.

I´ve installed it and phpinfo says that it is loaded:

This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine:
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader v4.7.2, Copyright (c) 2002-2014, by ionCube Ltd.

So I thought to check how it runs, but unfortunately I cannot find any statistics,change any configuration for encoder or even see if it is working (HTTP response does not have "X-Accelerated-By" value).

By doing some research, it seems to me that ionCube Encoder is separate application that encodes files before sending them to LIVE environment (for example) and loader displays encoded content.

Now the question is: Have I understood this correctly?