How to use the Email Disk Usage tool in cPanel
Knowledgebase Article
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Knowledgebase Article
Email has a habit of quietly piling up. Not just the important stuff, but the other stuff. Sent attachments you forgot about. Calendar invites from years ago. Automated notifications that felt important at the time. And, of course, the Sent folder, dutifully storing everything forever, just in case.
Before you know it, your mailbox is full to the brim.
You could upgrade your hosting plan - and sometimes that’s the right move. But if you don't want to keep six-year-old spam or a backlog of hefty attachments, you’re in the right place.
The good news? You don’t have to guess what’s using the space. cPanel includes a built-in Email Disk Usage tool that shows you exactly where your email storage is going — and lets you clean it up safely.
The Email Disk Usage tool shows how much space each folder in a mailbox is using, so you can quickly spot problem areas like large Sent folders or attachment-heavy mail.
To access it:
You’ll see a breakdown of folders such as Inbox, Sent, Trash and Spam, along with how much space each one is using.

Every copy of an email counts.
If you send a 10 MB attachment to five colleagues on the same hosting account:
That’s 60 MB of storage used by a single email.
This is why the Sent folder is so often the biggest surprise. Most email clients never clean it automatically, and replies usually include the message you originally sent, so keeping Sent emails from years ago often adds little value.
If you’re hesitating here, that’s completely normal. Email slowly turns into a record-keeping system by accident, especially if you’ve never organised things into folders.
A couple of habits can make a big difference going forward:
Small changes like these won’t fix an overflowing mailbox overnight, but they do stop the same problem quietly rebuilding itself.
Next to each folder, the Email Disk Usage tool lets you delete messages in bulk.
If you’re unsure where to start, this is a sensible approach:
This lets you reclaim space without touching things you’re actively using.
When selecting messages to delete, you’ll see a dropdown with several options. These control which emails are targeted in that folder.
The Custom query option allows more precise targeting using the same search language as the mail system behind cPanel (Dovecot). This is optional — most people won’t need it — but it can be very useful.
Examples:
before 2024-01-01larger 10Msubject "Invoice"from [email protected]larger 5M before 2023-01-01This targets emails larger than 5 MB that are also older than 1 January 2023.
For full reference, see the Dovecot documentation.
Sometimes email usage is genuinely high - shared mailboxes, lots of attachments, or record-keeping requirements.
If you’ve tidied up and are still hitting limits, options include:
Take a look at this article to understand your upgrade options. If you’re unsure what makes sense, we’re happy to help you choose the most cost-effective route.
Email doesn’t get messy overnight. It creeps.
The Email Disk Usage tool helps you:
A little housekeeping now saves a lot of stress later, and your future self will thank you.
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