What are followers and how can I set up followers to my database?

A follower to your database is another database that has a read-only copy of the master database. The follower will stay up-to-date with the master database data. All modification of the data, write/update/deletes are committed to the master database and the changes are streamed to the follower database.

You can use followers when you want to spread selects across multiple servers. Or you want to have a hot-standby ready to take over if you main database crashes.

Followers work by using PostgreSQL's built-in replication strategy.

On ElephantSQL is it easy to setup followers to your database. Go to the console page and press the follower tab and follow the instructions.