Home page doesn't display with Permalinks enabled

I am having a permalinks issue. I am using a custom permalink with the following value: /index.php/%category%/%postname%

If I go to my URL https://www.<sitename>.com, it will only display a list of all the posts, not the correct home page. If I use the URL https://www.<sitename>.com/index.php it works! It displays the correct home page instead of the list of posts.

The behavior is consistent no matter if I use the out of the box permalinks or not. Of course if you select default and turn off permalinks, the home page displays just fine when you go to the URL. If I click other pages on the website (with permalinks on) – the pages work fine and the permalinks work! It’s just the home page that won’t display — UNLESS I use https://www.<sitename>.com/INDEX.PHP Why would this be?

Wish I could provide the URL, but this is being hosted on a staging server at Lunarpages at the moment. Please – Any help would be appreciated!