Public clouds are servers accessed over the internet with public cloud services offered and hosted by a cloud service provider, such as DigitalOcean’s Droplets.
You can access the public cloud over the internet, paying for exactly the CPU cycles, bandwidth, and storage you require. Public cloud saves you from managing and maintaining physical hardware and infrastructure. While you share the public cloud amongst multiple users, the cloud service provider maintains your security and privacy.
The benefit of using a public cloud service is the ability to scale more quickly and inexpensively than maintaining your own physical on-premises infrastructure.
An alternative to using a public cloud service is to use a private cloud which comprises of internal networks and on-premise resources. You can also use a combination of public and private resources to create a hybrid cloud.