InnoVators is a high school and college pitch competition where students present startups, business ideas, and nonprofit concepts to a panel of judges. Every year, dozens of applicants upload photos and videos of their products through the organization's WordPress site, and the event photographers add hundreds of high-resolution images from competition day. That adds up to gigabytes of new media every year on a site running GoDaddy's basic WordPress hosting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem was simple. Storage was filling up, GoDaddy was pushing an expensive VPS upgrade, and the nonprofit's budget needed to go toward students, not server bills. Infinite Uploads fixed all of it. InnoVators offloaded their entire media library to the cloud, downgraded their GoDaddy plan to the cheapest option available, and now has 20GB MORE storage than before at a lower cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
InnoVators, formerly Celebrating High School Innovators, runs an annual pitch competition for high school and college students. These aren't just business students. They're kids with startups, creative ideas, and nonprofits they want to launch. The organization collects applications through their WordPress website, and part of that application process requires students to upload media like photos and videos of their product or idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On top of the student uploads, InnoVators also stores all the competition day photography on the site. These are high-resolution images from professional photographers, often 15 to 20MB per photo. For 100 to 200 images each year, that's a LOT of storage consumed in a single event cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
InnoVators was on GoDaddy's Hosting for WordPress Ultimate plan, paying $323.88 per year for 30GB of storage. They were almost out of space. GoDaddy's solution was to move them to a VPS at $551.63 per year, and that only came with 40GB. For a nonprofit trying to put money toward student prizes, that math doesn't work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it wasn't just a storage problem. Students submitting applications sometimes reported issues uploading their images through the site. The combination of file sizes, hosting limits, and a basic WordPress setup was creating friction in the one process the organization depends on most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"As a non-profit, the costs with our hosting provider were getting too high for our increasing storage needs. This obviously affected how much we can give back to the students.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of their board members recommended Infinite Uploads. The team wasn't aware of other cloud storage plugins or offloading solutions for WordPress at the time, so they signed up and tried it. No comparison shopping, no lengthy evaluation. Just a recommendation from someone they trusted and a problem that needed solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one of the parts I like most about their story. The person managing InnoVators' website is a science teacher. Not a developer. Not a WordPress expert. A science teacher who runs this nonprofit on the side. And they got Infinite Uploads installed and syncing on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They created an account, installed the plugin, clicked a few buttons, and the sync started pulling all their existing media into the cloud. It took a while because the library was large, but the process itself was hands-off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only moment they needed help was when it came time to delete the local files after offloading. They were too nervous to click the button themselves (honestly, fair), so our support team logged in, confirmed everything had been offloaded successfully, and helped them clear the local storage. That freed up the space they needed to downgrade their GoDaddy plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"Offloading your hosting sounds scary and difficult, but Infinite Uploads made it easy. We just created an account and clicked a few buttons after installing the plugin, and it synced all of our existing images.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Their media library is a mix of student-submitted content and event photography. Specifically, they store videos and photos from student pitch applications, high-resolution event photos from competition day (15 to 20MB each), and the general media files that come with running any WordPress site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this used to sit on GoDaddy's servers and count against their storage limit. Now it's all in Infinite Uploads' cloud with CDN delivery, and GoDaddy's storage only holds the WordPress core files, themes, and plugins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here's where the numbers tell the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They went from nearly maxing out a $323.88\/yr plan to running on GoDaddy's cheapest option, with 20GB more cloud storage than they had before. And GoDaddy support stopped telling them they were out of space every time something broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"The best part was when I realized I could switch to the cheapest GoDaddy plan they had. Since those files aren't sitting on my server anymore, I'm saving the organization money.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to highlight this because it matters. The person managing InnoVators' site describes themselves as someone who \"barely knows anything about websites.\" They're a science teacher running a nonprofit pitch competition. They installed Infinite Uploads, offloaded their media, and now manage everything without technical help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"As a science teacher, I barely know anything about websites, so to install and do this so easily is a life saver.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That's who Infinite Uploads is built for. Not just developers and agencies. People running real organizations on WordPress who need their media to just work without becoming a project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n InnoVators has already expanded their competition to include college students alongside high schoolers. More applicants means more uploads, more storage consumed, and more media to manage. With Infinite Uploads handling the storage, that growth doesn't create a hosting problem. It's just growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \"As someone that isn't very technical, Infinite Uploads has made our life a lot easier for the InnoVators website. I used to be terrified of clicking the wrong thing and crashing the whole page, but now I don't have to worry about all those big files. If I can get it to work and save the school money at the same time, honestly, anyone can do it.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If a nonprofit running on GoDaddy's cheapest plan can offload gigabytes of student uploads and competition photos without a developer, you can too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ready to stop paying for storage you don't need? Start your free trial of Infinite Uploads and see how much you can save on hosting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" InnoVators is a high school and college pitch competition where students present startups, business ideas, and nonprofit concepts to a panel of judges. Every year, dozens of applicants upload photos and videos of their products through the organization’s WordPress site, and the event photographers add hundreds of high-resolution images from competition day. That adds up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3787,"featured_media":11612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/3787"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/11612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infiniteuploads.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How InnoVators Found and Chose Infinite Uploads<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Getting Started Was Easier Than Expected<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What InnoVators Stores With Infinite Uploads<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Results, More Storage, Lower Costs, and No More Upload Issues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Before Infinite Uploads<\/strong><\/td> After Infinite Uploads<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> GoDaddy WordPress Ultimate<\/td> GoDaddy WordPress Basic<\/td><\/tr> $323.88\/yr<\/td> Lower tier pricing + Infinite Uploads ($19\/mo or $16\/mo annual)<\/td><\/tr> 30GB (nearly full)<\/td> 50GB on Infinite Uploads + minimal local usage<\/td><\/tr> GoDaddy pushing VPS at $551.63\/yr for only 40GB<\/td> No upgrade needed<\/td><\/tr> Students reporting upload problems<\/td> Upload issues resolved<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n A Science Teacher Running a WordPress Site, No Technical Background Required<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What's Next for InnoVators<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
InnoVators' Advice for Others in the Same Situation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n