Nextgen sounds cool. Extra bandwidth is great. I also hope they add more RAM and provide some kind of a storage pool to store images/snapshots/virtual-disks between different linodes (similar to cloudfiles or EBS).
My linode IP ended up on an email block list because of someone else on the subnet. I was on vacation so I wanted a quick solution and I asked for an extra IP for a week. They wouldn't do for any amount of money. I had to set up an extra server and redirect connections instead.
However, it's so easy to fire-up another linode, shut down the host, move the disk image to the new linode, assign it and turn it on. You get a new IP, and can get rid of the old one. And all this via their web interface and with no need for support...
Not bashing linode, because I think they do a fine job - I have two servers with a year and a half of uptime. But I don't think the support is a valid reason for them charging more than their competitors.
trunking an additional vlan into their virtual pool just for you would have constituted a major production change in probably 2 or 3 core switch layers.
the operational risk and expenditure for this kind of change easily goes into the thousands of dollars, possibly tens of thousands if they screw something up.
what exactly is "any amount of money" to you? because to them and other service providers, it means tens of thousands of dollars, not another 50 bucks.
It was a whole subnet that was blacklisted. That said, they offered me a new IP from a couple different subnets as replacement, so I don't think it was too hard for them to do it. They would let me have an extra IP, but wouldn't let me run the two IPs concurrently for more than 24 hours.
This was especially frustrating since the subnet was blacklisted due to linode using generic PTR records by default. I needed a solution that didn't eat into my vacation time, so I ended up setting up a second server in the same datacenter and making it forward connections. That effectively got me a new IP for $20.
Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about it. I think they handled it fine. But I wouldn't hold them as some bastion of support perfection.
you got lucky though, most of the time the entire network of shared hosting providers is blacklisted from sending mail. they may have just rolled out a brand new subnet or something