Bulk Updating cPanel Account Contact Emails via SSH

When managing multiple cPanel accounts, you may need to update the notification email address for all users at once — for example, when switching support email addresses or consolidating contact information.
Manually changing each account’s email from WHM can be time-consuming, but with a simple Bash script, you can automate the process.

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

1. Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Root SSH access to the server.

• Basic knowledge of running commands in Linux.

• A backup of your server or at least the /var/cpanel/users/ directory. (Not compulsory – Recommended)

 2. How to Use the Script:

1. Log in to your server via SSH as root:

   ssh root@your-server-ip

    

2. Create a new script file:

   nano bulk_update_cpanel_emails.sh

    

3. Paste the script below into the file.

   Here’s the cleaned and safe-to-use version of the script:

   #!/bin/bash
   
   # Set the old and new email addresses
   OLD_EMAIL="old@example.com"
   NEW_EMAIL="new@example.com"
   
   echo "Starting bulk update: replacing '$OLD_EMAIL' with '$NEW_EMAIL'"
   
   # Loop through all usernames in the system
   cut -f2 -d' ' /etc/trueuserdomains | sort | while read -r username; do
       config="/var/cpanel/users/$username"
   
       # Skip if the config file doesn't exist
       [ ! -f "$config" ] && continue
   
       # Extract the current contact email
       current=$(grep -i "^CONTACTEMAIL=" "$config" | cut -d= -f2)
   
       # If the email matches the OLD_EMAIL, update it
       if [[ "$current" == "$OLD_EMAIL" ]]; then
           echo "Updating $username from $OLD_EMAIL → $NEW_EMAIL"
           /usr/local/cpanel/bin/whmapi1 modifyacct user="$username" contactemail="$NEW_EMAIL"
   
           # Check if update was successful
           if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
               echo "✅ Success: $username"
           else
               echo "❌ Error updating $username"
           fi
       fi
   done
   
   echo "Bulk update finished."
   

4. Replace:

   • old@example.com with your current contact email.

   • new@example.com with your new contact email.

5. Save and exit (CTRL + O, Enter, then CTRL + X).

   6. Make the script executable:

chmod +x bulk_update_cpanel_emails.sh

./bulk_update_cpanel_emails.sh

3. How It Works

• The script checks every cPanel account’s configuration file in /var/cpanel/users/.

• It looks for the CONTACTEMAIL entry.

• If the entry matches the old email address, it uses WHM’s modifyacct API to update it.

• It logs each update result to the terminal.

4 . Important Notes

• This will only update accounts that have the old email exactly matching what you define in OLD_EMAIL.

• If some accounts use different old emails, you’ll need to adapt the script.

• Always test the script on a staging server or with a small subset of accounts before running it on production.

💡 Pro Tip:
If you want to change all cPanel accounts to the new email regardless of what the old email is, you can modify the script to skip the check for OLD_EMAIL.
This “universal update” method is faster when you need to replace every account’s contact email in one go.