Introduction:
In a cPanel/WHM environment, each cPanel account has a contact email address that is used to receive important notifications such as backup alerts, disk usage warnings, security notices, and account-related system messages.
Prerequisites:
- Root or sudo access to the server
- A server running cPanel/WHM
- The cPanel username and the new contact email address
Method 1: Change Contact Email Using WHM API (Recommended)
This is the official and safest method, as it updates the account through WHM’s API.
Command:
| $ whmapi1 modifyacct user=CPANEL_USERNAME contactemail=NEW_EMAIL |
Example:
| $ whmapi1 modifyacct user=testuser contactemail=admin@example.com |
Method 2: Change Contact Email Using UAPI (User-Level).
Command
| $ uapi –user=CPANEL_USERNAME Contactus set_contact_emails email=admin@example.com |
Multiple Email Addresses:
| $ uapi –user=CPANEL_USERNAME Contactus set_contact_emails email=admin@example.com,ops@example.com |
Verification:
After updating the contact email, you can verify the change using the following commands:
| $ whmapi1 accountsummary user=CPANEL_USERNAME | grep -i contact |
Conclusion:
Updating the contact email for a cPanel account via the command line is a simple but important administrative task. Using WHM API (whmapi1) or UAPI ensures the change is applied correctly and remains consistent across the system.