Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hostwhitelabel.com. NS
Answer
hostwhitelabel.com. 4 NS ns2.hostwhitelabel.com.
hostwhitelabel.com. 4 NS ns1.hostwhitelabel.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.hostwhitelabel.com. 4 A 192.99.188.78
ns2.hostwhitelabel.com. 4 A 104.152.171.102
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0