Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig cpws.net. NS
Answer
cpws.net. 5 NS dns03.cpws.net.
cpws.net. 5 NS dns04.cpws.net.
cpws.net. 5 NS dns01.cpws.net.
cpws.net. 5 NS dns02.cpws.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
dns01.cpws.net. 5 A 66.211.16.21
dns02.cpws.net. 5 A 66.211.16.22
dns03.cpws.net. 5 A 66.211.17.245
dns04.cpws.net. 5 A 66.211.17.246
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0