Netsuite hosted site or external site

We are looking to redesign the look and feel of our site and would love to be as free as we can (also with regard to SEO). On the other side, we do want to use Netsuite for any product or customer information. Maintenance should be kept at a mimimum, especially as we are going to have four languages soon.

Looking at the options, we were wondering in what way Netsuite hosted sites differ from an external sites? I mean apart from the fact that the files are stored in different locations. You still need in both cases the scripts to get the info in and out of Netsuite. Are the response times quicker, because it is all at the same place? Who has good experience with Netsuite hosted sites? It would be great to get some views on that. We have already an external hosting company, so costs for hosting is no issue for us.