[xdude]

Well there are 2 types of companies effected by this. Shared Hosting Companies and VPS/Dedi providers. Now VPS providers usually pass the full fee to customers. Here I'm talking about Managed VPS and dedicated servers. They take care of Hosting administration for Web Design/Developments firms, Freelance developers etc. When cPanel increased price last time maybe decide to stay after checking what options they have. But this time many actively trying to move to other products. cPanel saw this early and waved olive branch for big companies. For example my provider sent me a mail saying as per their agreement with cPanel any client who has less than 200 accounts won't see any price increase. Plus these providers clients are mostly developers not end users. So end users don't see any of this.

But it's different for shared hosting providers since they cater mostly for end users. It would hit hard for many.Some might start office both cPanel and DirectAdmin hosting letting their clients a chance to opt for whatever they prefer.