Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig stat-pulse.com. NS
Answer
stat-pulse.com. 2 NS ns-223.awsdns-27.com.
stat-pulse.com. 2 NS ns-1284.awsdns-32.org.
stat-pulse.com. 2 NS ns-687.awsdns-21.net.
stat-pulse.com. 2 NS ns-1607.awsdns-08.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0