There is really no difference between a capsule, softgel, and powder in terms of effectiveness.
The capsule, softgel, or tablet is just a vessel for easy delivery of the active ingredients to the digestive system.
Capsules and softgels are going to do the same thing a powder form will and the time difference isn't very long.
- Capsule - a capsule will break down within an average of 15 minutes once swallowed, releasing the active ingredients.
- Softgels - a softgel will break down within an average of 15 minutes once swallowed, releasing the active ingredients.
- Powder - you bypass the delivery method of a capsule or softgel, but there's no benefit to that other than it not taking the short period of time to dissolve.
- Tablets - this one I'm a little more hesitant on because it depends on what the tablet is made out of as to how it can effect it dissolving. A tablet is my least preferable form for personal use, but as long as the brand uses binders that will dissolve and in a reasonable period of time, they can still be okay.
There's more than most people realize that goes into determining the proper vessel for a given ingredient or formula.
- Powders:
- Are ideal in situations where is a high dosage requirement or when the person wishes to mix multiple powders together to create their own concoction.
- Are not ideal when the ingredients taste bad, which may discourage people from using them properly.
- Example: We had people ask us for a Cissus XT powder, so we offered one. It didn't sell well at all because Cissus tastes so bad and we discontinued it bc the capsules sold 100 bottles to 1 over the powder version.
- Capsules:
- Are ideal in most situations where the raw material is a powder form and the dosage of the powder or the formula doesn't require an excessive number of capsules.
- The average size 00 capsule will hold 700 to 750 mg. per capsule.
- So for a 4 capsule product, you can fit on average 2,800 to 3,000 total mg.
- Softgels:
- Are usually only considered ideal when the raw material would be in a liquid form.
- This is ideal for liquid based ingredients such as fish oil, algal oil, etc.
- There are also situations where a raw material may have a certain potency in a liquid form and still be available in a much lesser potency form in a powder form - and then if a brand wants to give the most potent form, a softgel would be ideal.
- An example of this is X-Gels.
- X-Gels is an Arachidonic Acid supplement.
- Arachidonic Acid is available in a 10% powder or 40% liquid.
- Brands that use the powder Arachidonic Acid are only providing 100 mg. active ARA per 1,000 mg. powder used.
- X-Gels contains 625 mg. of Arachidonic Acid oil for 250 mg. actual ARA per softgel.
- That means that it would require 10,000 mg. of ARA powder (min. 14 capsules) to equal the amount of active ARA that is in 4 softgels of X-Gels.
Most of the softgels that you see on the market are ran by one of few large softgel facilities and then sold to different brands, who put their labels on them. In cases like this, they're fairly common and not terribly priced.
The reason that you don't see many brands do custom softgels is because they're expensive, have high MOQ's, and many times results in higher cost and lower margin items.
You can reference the X-Gels example above - our cost is over 4x the price of brands using ARA powder and we have to run a lot of softgels at once which leads to a lot of money being tied up - and then unfortunately, a lot of people don't even know that they are that much more potent than the brands doing basic capsules.
There's no one overall best or worse type of vessel for delivery. It can depend on the ingredient in some cases, and in most cases is the same.
