DocStoc scoops up ‘Yelp for small businesses’ BestVendor in its first acquisition

Docstoc has acquired BestVendor in an effort to “make every small business better.”

Docstoc is a popular online library of small business documents. It has over 10,000 contracts, forms, and templates that small business owners need to get up and running. Documents span categories like legal, personal finance, and real estate, and can be embedded, stored, shared, uploaded, and monitored.

The company has been significantly expanding its product offerings over the past year. It added in License123, a database of business licenses and permits, and ExpertCircle, a platform for sharing recommendations about online and offline business vendors. Last year, it also unleashed 30 free iPad and iPhone apps for business users into the App Store and a library of video-based courses featuring business advice from experts.

BestVendor is a startup that helps people find the best web, mobile, and desktop applications for their business. It operates a recommendations and reviews site that helps business users decide which online tools to use. In a post on BestVendor’s blog this morning, the company said that its “current functionality will not be affected” by the acquisition and that the two companies share the ongoing mission to help business owners “start, grow, and manage your professional life and small business.”

Editor’s note: The role cloud-based services play for small businesses is a key theme at our upcoming upcoming CloudBeat conference, Sept. 9-10 in San Francisco. We’ll be discussing the value SMBs see in the cloud and how these differ from enterprise users. Register today!

DocStoc has been around since 2007 and claims to have more than 35 million registered users. This is its first acquisition. BestVendor was founded in January 2011 but didn’t have the same growth of distribution as DocStoc. Joining DocStoc’s community will give its platform greater exposure. DocStoc, in turn, will now be able to offer reviews and ratings on cloud products.

Small business are increasingly turning to cloud services to run their businesses. The proliferation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools and the trend of “outservicing” create an environment where business owners can focus on the few things they really excel at and use online solutions to take care of the rest. The Internet has a wealth of solutions for HR, inventory management, marketing, finances, etc., but along with all these options comes the need to make sense of them. DocStoc and BestVendor will now work together to be a comprehensive resource for small business owners navigating the complicated logistics of getting a business off the ground.

L.A.-based DocStoc has raised $4 million in funding to date and is profitable. BestVendor has raised $3.6 million and is based in New York. The details of the deal were not disclosed.