Now that I have several hunderd links in both a esyndicat and a phpld directory, I can give a better opinion. Phpld is a lot better when it comes to the ease of templating and making new templates for the directory. The payment system works better than esyndicats. Esyndicat is a lot easier to manage from the backend with new submissions. I really like that I can look at a category and see the links waiting to be approved instead of just seeing the category like phpld. The main reason for that is I keep links out of the 1st level of the category and it's a lot easier to see them in there with esyndicat Both are excellent scripts and the load time is a virtual tie. Both have good support though there are more people that support phpld.
That is excellent feedback miller2348. I will see if I can create a view that allows you to see the links by status in each category.