I've been a Linode customer for nearly 5 years. During that time, I've found their service and their customer support to be nothing less than stellar. VPS performance is very good, especially when compared to the plethora of VZ-based VPS providers out there. Even at the lowest price point, you get access to all 4 cores on the host machine - very cool. Linode doesn't oversell RAM on their hosts, which means you'll *always* have access to the RAM you pay for.

If you're not familiar with VPS-type services, here's a quick rundown. You can think of your VPS as if it were a normal server, root access and all. In nearly all aspects (OS installation being one exception), VPS's act just like their non-virtualized cousins. Linode provides the infrastructure for you to deploy a linux distro (several pre-configured bare bones linux distributions are available, as well as the option to build your own disk image and upload it), gain console access to the server, set up networking, manage disk images, etc. Linode also makes it very easy to migrate your VPS between Linode plans. If you outgrow one plan, all it takes to migrate up is a simple support ticket. The Linode staff then sets up the migration, after which a "migrate" button appears on your web control panel. When ready, one click of that button kicks off the migration. A short amount of time later (largely dependent on how large your disk images are), your VPS is ready to go on the new plan.

Through the time I've been with Linode, I've only had a handful of instances where I needed assistance from the Linode staff. Each time, my query was responded to in a very timely fashion (usually under 15 minutes), and they were very prompt at resolving the issue. Linode has a very active user community, accessible either through the forums or the IRC Channel. Though the Linode staff offer a largely hands-off product (meaning that they're not available to do any hands-on sysadmin or setup work for you), they're very willing to answer questions in the IRC channel, as are the many Linode customers who are present in the channel.

If you're in the market for a VPS or are starting to run into the limitations imposed by a standard webhosting account, I'd strongly encourage you to give Linode a try. You surely won't be disappointed.