Softwr

Government · head to head

NEOGOV vs Semperis

NEOGOV logo

NEOGOV

Government

Public sector HR suite covering civil service recruiting, onboarding, training and policy management

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Semperis logo

Semperis

Cybersecurity

Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: NEOGOV each module is shallower than the specialist product it competes with, so agencies buying the full suite for coherence accept weaker performance management and learning than they would get separately.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • They diverge on capability: NEOGOV covers Civil service recruiting, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which NEOGOV and Semperis actually diverge.

Attributes where NEOGOV and Semperis differ
AttributeNEOGOVSemperis
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWeb
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in NEOGOV

  • Civil service recruiting
  • Veterans preference handling
  • GovernmentJobs.com posting
  • Onboarding workflows
  • Learning and training records
  • Policy management

Only in Semperis

  • Active Directory Forest Recovery
  • Malware-free restore
  • Replication-stream monitoring
  • Automated rollback
  • Attack indicator scoring
  • Entra ID and Okta coverage
  • Purple Knight
  • Forest Druid

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

NEOGOV

  • A city or county HR department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility listsnot Semperis
  • A public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigationnot Semperis
  • An agency replacing a commercial applicant tracking system that cannot handle veterans preferencenot Semperis
  • A school district or university consolidating recruiting, onboarding and mandated training recordsnot Semperis

Semperis

  • An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot NEOGOV
  • Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot NEOGOV
  • Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot NEOGOV
  • Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot NEOGOV

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

NEOGOV

  • Each module is shallower than the specialist product it competes with, so agencies buying the full suite for coherence accept weaker performance management and learning than they would get separately.
  • Policy management arrived through the PowerDMS acquisition rather than being built in, and the join between it and the rest of the suite still reads as two products.
  • Implementation is long and configuration heavy because the civil service rules that make the product valuable have to be encoded for your jurisdiction, and that work is billed.
  • Pricing is not published and scales with headcount, so a large agency can pay several times what a comparable one pays without knowing it unless someone reads the public contracts.
  • Private equity ownership since the Warburg Pincus investment has coincided with an acquisition led strategy, and buyers should expect further products bolted on rather than deeper integration of the existing ones.

Semperis

  • Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
  • It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
  • Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
  • Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.

Pricing, plan by plan

NEOGOV

On request
  • NEOGOV Suite$undefined/year
    • Quoted per module and scaled by employee headcount
    • Implementation and data migration priced separately from the subscription
    • Available through cooperative purchasing and state term contracts

Semperis

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.

Which should you pick?

Choose NEOGOV if

  • You need civil service recruiting.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want veterans preference handling.
NEOGOV review

Choose Semperis if

  • You need active directory forest recovery.
  • You also want malware-free restore.
Semperis review

Questions people ask

Is NEOGOV or Semperis better?
Neither clearly leads. NEOGOV starts at On request and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, NEOGOV or Semperis?
NEOGOV starts at On request and Semperis at On request.
Does NEOGOV or Semperis run on more platforms?
NEOGOV runs on Web, iOS, Android. Semperis runs on Web.
What is NEOGOV best used for?
NEOGOV is most often used for a city or county hr department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility lists, a public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigation, an agency replacing a commercial applicant tracking system that cannot handle veterans preference, a school district or university consolidating recruiting, onboarding and mandated training records. Of those, a city or county hr department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility lists and a public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigation are not what Semperis is typically brought in for.
What can NEOGOV do that Semperis cannot?
NEOGOV covers Civil service recruiting, Veterans preference handling, GovernmentJobs.com posting, Onboarding workflows. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

NEOGOV: Why not use a commercial applicant tracking system?

Because civil service rules such as ranked eligibility lists, rule of three certification and veterans preference are not expressible in commercial products, so the statutory steps end up in spreadsheets.

Semperis: Does this replace my backups?

No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.

NEOGOV: Can I find out what other agencies pay?

Yes. These are public procurements, so executed contract values appear in council agenda packets and state term contract listings. Read several before negotiating.

Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?

Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.

NEOGOV: What did NEOGOV acquire?

PowerDMS, a policy management and accreditation product, in 2021, which is now sold as the policy module of the suite.

Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?

Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.

NEOGOV: Is it only for the United States?

Effectively yes. The value is in encoding US civil service and public safety requirements.

Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?

The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.

Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?

It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.

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