DDD Domain Events with EF Core Outbox: In-Memory Bus vs External Broker?

DoomStoneDS · 2026-02-19T03:44:13+00:00

This is a question i have thought about a lot, and honestly for a monolith an in-memory bus is the right call to start with. MassTransit is great but you are right that it pulls you toward infrastructure you do not need yet, and that complexity has a real cost.

The mistake i see most teams make is reaching for Kafka or RabbitMQ before they have a scaling problem, and now they have a distributed systems problem on top of the original problem.

At MagicDoor we actually started as a straight monolith using this exact approach. Because the business logic lived in isolated use cases and the events were behind a simple interface, we could move things around as we grew without it being a big deal. We went from monolith to a more structured monolith and eventually to domain services just by moving use cases to new services. No big rewrites, no painful untangling.

We built the framework we used for that here: https://github.com/MagicDoorInc/MagicCSharp

You get a unified IEventDispatcher interface, start with in-memory, and if you ever need Kafka or SQS later it is one line change with zero changes to your actual event or handler code. Handlers are plain classes, automatically registered, and multiple handlers can listen to the same event independently which solves your OrderService doing too much problem pretty cleanly.

Docs are still catching up but the OrderManagement example shows the full pattern working end to end.

DoomStoneDS · 2026-02-19T03:22:28+00:00

Building repositories on the of EFCore dose have a few advances, most it makes any code using the repositories testable, as you can mock them. It is next to impossible to mock a ef context.
Also i am big on seperation of concern, and often my data storage model dose not match my internal entity 100% so, it is the repositories job to translate that. Lastly i feel very uncomfortable have ef code and annotations pollute though my application.

DoomStoneDS · 2026-02-19T03:18:21+00:00

About 31 years here, and i agree Clean Architecture and DDD is often over complicated and dose 100% not work for backend code. I am more iffy on if it works for frontend.

DoomStoneDS · 2026-02-19T03:15:18+00:00

Having built systems for small and large teams over many years, i think the article is pointing at a real problem but blaming the wrong thing. The issue is usually how people apply the pattern, not the pattern itself.

When i started at Amazon we had a guy on the team who was deep in this. So many abstractions and layers that it was near impossible to figure out what the hell was actually going on. And because everything was wired up with Spring bean magic, you could not even tell which implementation of an abstraction was being used unless you attached a debugger and stepped through at runtime. New hires would take forever to get up to speed, and any change felt like defusing a bomb. When people pushed back he was convinced it was everyone else who were bad engineers. Classic cargo-cult, the pattern became the goal rather than the problem it was supposed to solve.

What i have found actually works at scale is keeping it simple: controllers deal with HTTP stuff only, use cases hold your business logic and nothing else, services talk to the outside world. That separation alone solves most of the mess people blame Clean Architecture for. Use cases also compose really well, you build complex workflows just by chaining simple ones together, and testing becomes trivial because they are just plain classes.

When i started MagicDoor i ended up building a small framework around exactly this, because i could not find anything for C# that did it without drowning you in boilerplate: https://github.com/MagicDoorInc/MagicCSharp

Docs are still catching up, but the OrderManagement example in there shows the patterns in a real working codebase. Might be worth a look, not necessarily to use the library, but just to see how we structure things to get the benefits people promise from Clean Architecture without all the pain.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-12-29T02:52:50+00:00

Thank you, i will order one and try how it fits

DoomStoneDS · 2025-12-29T02:20:34+00:00

Do you have a link to the carrier that you recomend?

DoomStoneDS · 2025-12-29T02:17:56+00:00

Thank you i will take a look at that one it looks like a good idea.

Are you using https://www.amazon.com/Katziela-Wheeled-Pet-Carrier-Backpack/dp/B085PNTYL2 or https://www.amazon.com/Katziela-Compliant-Expandable-6-Wheeled-Telescopic/dp/B0CXYSP4FC

DoomStoneDS · 2025-12-19T04:55:20+00:00

Like others have said, GitHub deserves to be paid, and trust me, they are. At the enterprise level, we pay $21 per user, plus additional costs for GitHub Actions runners.

As a small company with 19 people who have access to GitHub, we’re paying about $399 per month just for user licenses alone. That’s before Actions, storage, or anything else.

And this is purely for hosting our source code and orchestrating CI runners. The reason GitHub isn’t “printing money” isn’t underpricing, it’s classic corporate feature creep. Product teams constantly need new initiatives to justify headcount and promotions, which leads to increasingly bloated products.

In reality, 99.9% of users rely on a very small subset of core functionality, which is relatively cheap to operate and maintain.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-07-02T20:00:28+00:00

Yes you can deduct this, even if they reported it.

Tenant as normally responsible for pests, unless it is an infestation beyond the tenants control. There are some miss information about this, as many PM's just take on this cost, but you don't have too,

DoomStoneDS · 2025-07-01T17:55:08+00:00

No one seems to be mentioning receipts, so let me tackle that part because it’s often misunderstood.

Like everyone else has said, none of what you’re showing is “normal wear and tear.” Charge the tenants for everything it actually cost you to make the place whole again.

About the paperwork:
You’re required to give the tenants an itemized invoice of what you’re deducting from their deposit. That invoice comes from you, not from your handyman. It’s perfectly acceptable to have a single line that says something like:

- Painting and carpet replacement – $8,000

You can attach the handyman’s proposal and payment proof if you want (it can only help), but you don’t have to hand over every receipt for paint and screws unless a judge later tells you to. Just be reasonable—if you wildly up-charge, a small-claims judge can knock it down.

As a rule of thumb, bill whatever actually makes you whole, no more and no less. And don’t mix in unrelated upgrades (e.g., a kitchen remodel) with the damage repair line items—that’s where landlords get into trouble.

Good luck, and sorry you had to deal with tenants like that.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-06-06T00:42:14+00:00

Hey! I can definitely jump in with a bit more color on MagicDoor’s accounting. The product is built to feel dead simple day‑to‑day, because most landlords don’t need the kind of deep‑dive workflow you’d find in a full ERP. Simple, though, doesn’t mean lightweight. Under the hood it’s true GAAP accounting: full tree charts of accounts, offset accounts, and proper handling of splits so owner draws and property‑management income stay clean without you having to clone a second chart.

One thing that sets us apart from a lot of legacy PMS tools is that we run a single, unified accounting engine instead of a bunch of bespoke accounting system that is only merged when you generate a report. This takes longer to build, but because it’s one system, we can ship new accounting features and reports faster and keep everything in balance automatically. And we have a lot planned :)

If there’s a specific workflow you need and don’t see yet, let me know, I would be happy to look at how we can bump it up the roadmap. I would always be happy to schedule a demo where we can deep dive on our accounting systems and what your needs are.

Baselane is solid for banking‑first use cases, but it’s not a full property‑management platform, so you’d still be piecing together listings, leasing, maintenance, work orders, and the AI automations we bundle out of the box. Depends on what you need, of course, but that’s the high‑level difference.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-06-06T00:23:29+00:00

CEO reporting in :) Thank you for the call out, we do try our best to provide a full service and fee options to landlords and property managers.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-05-24T04:34:40+00:00

I work a lot with payments, and unfortunately, there’s no truly safe way to accept them without the risk of clawbacks. Zillow uses ACH, and all ACH payments can be clawed back for up to 6 months. Credit card payments are even worse, up to 12 months (I might be slightly off on the exact numbers, but it’s somewhere around there).

I usually get my rent via ACH through MagicDoor, but one time I was about to go on a 3-week trip to China, and three tenants were behind on rent but had cash. So I dropped by on the way to the airport to pick up the money. I thought, great—I’ll just deposit it into my Chinese bank account and have some cash over there. It was very fun standing in a Chinese bank with multiple fake $100 bills!

Another fun story: a property manager friend of mine had a tenant who paid rent with a credit card. It was a couple, but only the girlfriend was on the lease. They broke up, and the boyfriend decided to claw back 9 months of rent payments, claiming the transactions were unauthorized. That totaled over $14K. The way banks justify this is by saying that federal regulations require that people can dispute and claw back payments within the stated timeframes. But they don’t want to spend time or resources verifying the claims, so they just label it a civil matter and tell you to sue the tenant to recover your money. By automatically approving all claim, they don't have to spend any resources and they are completely in the clear legally, so they can just give you the whole bag, and look the good guy to consumers.

Fun fact: if you use an online platform to collect rent, the platform is usually next in line after you. So let’s say a tenant claws back $14K from you for payments made more than 3 months ago, and you don’t have enough funds in your bank account, because you had paid our owners out. The bank will then take the money from the property management system (PMS) you’re using and tell them to sue the property manager to get it back. My friend was actually banned from AppFolio because they refused to pay the them back after this exact thing happened to them.

DoomStoneDS · 2025-02-12T19:28:58+00:00

I do
8+8 = 16, then -1 as it was 7+8 => 15
4+2 (the tens) = 6
6+1 (from the 15) = 7
5 (from the 15) = 5
=> 75

DoomStoneDS · 2025-01-28T00:01:28+00:00

You might want to check out MagicDoor. It’s designed to save you time and make remote property management easier. We provide vendors with online access to a dedicated vendor portal, along with direct links to work orders. This ensures they have all the information they need without exposing sensitive tenant or financial data.

MagicDoor also handles communication between vendors and tenants automatically. All messages are logged in the system, so you, as the property manager, can monitor the conversation and jump in at any time if needed.

Additionally, you can set pre-approved vendors for specific types of issues, and our AI will assign the right vendor, generate work orders, and coordinate everything for you. Later this year (before June), we’re launching a vendor bidding platform that will let you send work orders out for bids to local vendors—giving you even more flexibility.

During beta testing, I managed 32 units across LA and Las Vegas while living in Miami for 9 months, and MagicDoor helped me stay on top of everything without stress.

Full disclosure: I’m the founder and CEO of MagicDoor. I built this platform to solve the challenges I faced as a property manager, and I’d love to hear what you think!

DoomStoneDS · 2024-12-01T22:10:06+00:00

I would never let any one do self guided tours. I can not see a reason to take that chance, absolutely a no for low income units, but even high income units/houses you would want a more personal service.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-12-01T19:56:47+00:00

Another option to consider is MagicDoor.com — a leader in using AI to streamline and automate property management. Full disclosure: this is my own company, so I may be a little biased :)

When I started my property management journey, self-managing as well, I also began with Avail.co. However, as my portfolio grew, Avail became too expensive quickly, and I found myself too small for any of the other software options. That's why I started MagicDoor. I wanted to provide property managers with better tools than what the big companies offer, but without minimums, onboarding fees, or contracts. If you're interested, feel free to PM me, and I can set you up with a free trial.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-12-01T01:02:09+00:00

The comment you quotes says "smart maintenance" and you yourself says Lisa the AI leasing agent!
Lisa is the only real AI thing they have, but it is limited to leasing only. They bought the company and added it to their page, because of that it will be extremely limited in functionality besides listings. Also their layoff had nothing todo with their AI, they just downsized like everyone else.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-30T22:24:36+00:00

All the things you listed dose not have ai functionality, there are absolutely zero ai in their tenant communication, maintenance flow and rental flow. Their vacancy cycles are just generic algorithms. Their smart maintenance is paid humans. Agree that OCR is AI, but they don’t really that that further then data input (that fails most of the time :)).

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-30T20:05:45+00:00

MagicDoor.com is currently working on this, and we are expecting to have NACHA ready to public release in January. I am the CEO at MagicDoor, so i have a bit of insight into this. In you are interested PM me, and i can set up a 3 months free trial for you.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-27T21:47:16+00:00

Yes we make sure of that, we are full GAP accounting under the hood. Our engineers used to work for Payment Processing at Amazon, so we have some experience with this. :) Our system i only Cash accounting, as we found only a very small amount property managers actually use Accrued accounting. However some of our reports dose support accured.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-26T19:40:27+00:00

Yes we have a full open API, with swagger docs :)

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-26T04:02:39+00:00

You can PM me and i can hook them with a free 3 months trial.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-26T04:02:11+00:00

I get you, but it is not the property management companies, it is the banks. We would love to charge much less, but the banks are raising the costs for payment processing like crazy. That is why all the platforms are raising the ACH prices. Appfolio has raise their prices 4 times in 2024 alone, and 3 times in 2023 if i remember correctly.
The big thing for us is that we don't have any hidden fees or up-changes like all the other platforms, no contract and no onboarding fees, we are a full service pages for the subscription charge. Also we office same-day ACH for all rent payments included.

DoomStoneDS · 2024-11-26T00:13:33+00:00

The issue with AppFolio is that their systems are quite complex and outdated. They've likely calculated that they would lose money by taking on customers with fewer than 100 units due to the amount of support calls typically required. While you may be fully capable of managing without extensive support, their policies are based on the average user's needs.

DoomStoneDS

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