I tend to disagree with your statement here.
1. DK & NL is both reliant on keeping their infamy scores down due to their freetrading, Hansa isn't, the difference is that you can go crazy in a multitude of ways, from going on a vassalspree in europe to conquering india or china fast and establishing yourself there very fast as a westernized power and later compensating for obvious slider problems with the higher income from production due to being in a better area productionwise.
2. On top of that as you start mercantile as Hansa, that leaves it open to go to ie Caribean/Indonesia, use your initial forcelimits+fast tech and moving your slider fast towards naval to become a competitive naval power sitting on sweet isles and later moving your capital to asia or caribean while still continuing to stay mercantile as your isles will produce more then enough production value to allow a merc nation to exist. Obviously such a move would mean an agreement and understanding to be reached with either France or Austria as well as Hansa winning the initial "tradewar" against Venice.
Variations, combinations and similar is possible as well although these two examples just presents the differences from DK/NL in a somewhat competitive MP enviroment from my experience.