Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig howbby.com. NS
Answer
howbby.com. 5 NS ns-1987.awsdns-56.co.uk.
howbby.com. 5 NS ns-1136.awsdns-14.org.
howbby.com. 5 NS ns-690.awsdns-22.net.
howbby.com. 5 NS ns-1089.awsdns-08.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0