[tiwil]

Coming to the price aspect, free and smaller providers will definitely be affected, but the big providers with thousands of clients won't. All they have to do is raise their pricing by a few cents (maybe a dollar), and they have the surplus to pay to cPanel. Both the user and the provider are happy in this case, and considering users I guess hardly anyone would mind a bit increase in their monthly pricing once a while, and moreover, all of us hate to switch, so it won't be a bother.

Correct. Adding $0,2/mo at their pricing won't hurt too much. It's (very) cheap for most of people that need to host their website. cPanel also "easy" to use if we compare to another panel. They also have rich addons that can be added to the panel such as Cloudflare. We can configure Cloudflare inside the hosting itself, no need to open Cloudflare's website. There are many more addons too.

If smaller companies switch to alternatives like DirectAdmin, and when they see a bigger name is providing cPanel for a  few cents extra they'll naturally switch. Of course losing customers isn't what a small provider would want, and hence, they'll have to marginalize their profit and continue with cPanel, unless they wanna run out of business.

Good point. It's the same price competition like OVH vs small VPS companies. OVH offers VPS with 2GB RAM for only $6/mo for Singapore location, even lower if you decide to get 12 or more months commitments. While on the other hand, small VPS companies offer higher price for such VPS. ExtraVM, for example, they ask $10/mo for the exactly same specs.

Human always want to get the most benefit they can get. This also applies to web hosting panel. cPanel won't run out of business any soon with this price change. Unless, all hosting provider decide to switch .