Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig softridge.com. NS
Answer
softridge.com. 3 NS ns41.domaincontrol.com.
softridge.com. 3 NS ns42.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0