Brill Formulation Alternative: Comparing Feedsoft for Modern Feed Formulation

Brill Formulation has one of the longest pedigrees in feed software. It originated with Feed Management Systems in the 1980s, was combined with Format International under Cargill ownership and marketed as Format Solutions from 2016, and moved to Datacor in 2022, where the Format Solutions brand has since been retired in favor of Datacor's own. Through all of that, Brill remained a workhorse least-cost formulation system used by large feed and pet food companies worldwide.

We compete with Brill's current owner, so read this comparison accordingly; we have tried to keep it factual and to point out where Brill remains a strong choice. For background on the formulation concepts both products implement, see how least-cost formulation works.

Brill earned its position. Its optimization engine handles multi-plant and multi-blend problems, optimizing many formulas and shared premixes simultaneously across sites, which matters to large organizations buying ingredients centrally and producing regionally. Its ingredient and nutrient management is mature, and the surrounding portfolio adds regulatory labeling and traceability tooling.

The installed base is a genuine advantage too: decades of use across large operations means nutritionists who know the system, consultants who support it, and workflows refined by thousands of users.

Brill is rooted in classic Windows desktop architecture, and its owner now positions a newer product, Ara, as the forward-looking formulation platform, with Brill and New Century continuing as maintained product lines. Buyers evaluating the family today should ask which product they are actually buying, what its roadmap is, and what a future migration between them would involve.

Feedsoft takes the opposite starting point: one browser-based platform, no installation, automatic updates, and an interface designed so occasional users do not need retraining. Formula editing, constraint diagnostics, versioning, and approvals are built into the same workflow our other modules share.

On the core discipline both systems cover what professional formulators need: least-cost optimization, nutrient minimums, maximums, and ratios, ingredient limits, multi-species specifications, price-driven reformulation, and formula version history. If your organization runs enterprise-scale multi-blend optimization across many plants from one nutrition department, Brill's machinery for that is proven, and you should weigh it seriously.

Feedsoft focuses on making formulation depth usable: clear infeasibility diagnostics that show which constraints conflict, instant re-optimization when prices change, and approvals that gate what production can use. For most mills below enterprise scale, those are the capabilities that decide daily outcomes.

The bigger difference is what surrounds the solver. In the Brill world, mill operations are typically handled by separate products or a third-party ERP, connected through integration work. Feedsoft is built as one platform where formulation sits beside inventory, purchasing, production, quality, and traceability, sharing one data model from the start.

In practice that means formulas constrained by live stock and lot data, supplier price updates that re-price every affected formula at once, and batch records that assemble themselves from work production already does.

Choose Brill, or its successor products, if you are an enterprise nutrition organization that needs proven multi-plant, multi-blend optimization and already has systems and staff built around that ecosystem. Choose Feedsoft if you want modern cloud formulation connected to mill operations in one modular platform your team can adopt in weeks.

Either way, evaluate with your own data: import your ingredients and specs into a trial, put your least technical user in front of each system, and run the checklist from our buyer's guide. Our comparisons of BESTMIX and Datacor cover the neighboring choices in the same landscape.