Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig simplelists.com. NS
Answer
simplelists.com. 5 NS ns2.simplelists.com.
simplelists.com. 5 NS ns1.simplelists.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.simplelists.com. 5 A 78.143.254.51
ns2.simplelists.com. 5 A 91.234.234.31
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0